Oedipus borealis. The Aberrant Body in Old Icelandic Myth and Saga by Lois Bragg (review)

REVIEWS 199 vista, in which an uncanny note to folio forty sends the reader without much explanation directly to folio seventy-three (50). In the fourth and final chapter, “Classrooms, Libraries, and Archives as the Culmination of Human Memory,” Bouza declares that during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries writing “came to be viewed as the consummation of humanity ” (57). For support he appeals to two types of documents. Documents of the first type feature the importance of reading and writing in education, while documents of the second type reveal the growing interest of court politicians in collecting books and manuscripts. Bouza points out that already by the midseventeenth century, González Bastones’s idea that an illiterate man “cannot be called a perfect man” (57) had begun to influence the higher spheres of society as political figures such as the marquis of Heliche, King Philip II and the duke of Sessa Luis Fernández de Córdoba, engaged in the acquisition of manuscripts, books, and entire libraries (63–66). Both pedagogical justification and political recognition stand in Bouza’s view as the final stamps of approval by which the written word was established as the official archive of memory. Bouza’s book constitutes an ambitious exposition of the topic of memory and the transmission of knowledge in early modern Spain. Implicit in the author ’s discussion is the awareness and appreciation that not all history is written history. Bouza draws our attention to “the anachronistic prejudice” (5) in contemporary historiography, in which the significance given to writing rather than to concrete reality is the result of projecting our own contemporary views. One should not forget, however, that as early as 1632, Galileo Galilei in his Dialogue on the Two Main Systems, after praising all the advancements of humanity , makes his case for writing based on its capacity to communicate and preserve our memory regardless of the limits of space and time: But beyond all the stupendous inventions what eminence of mind was possessed by him who had the imagination to find a way of communicating his most recondite thoughts to any other person whatsoever, how ever far away he might be in space or in time? ... And with what ease? By the various arrangements of twenty little marks on a piece of paper. Let this be the seal of all the admirable human inventions and the end of our conversations today ...6 Perhaps what Bouza calls the “empire of writing” (8) is not necessarily a prejudice from our time. CLAUDIA MESA, Spanish and Portuguese, UCLA Lois Bragg, Oedipus borealis. The Aberrant Body in Old Icelandic Myth and Saga. Cranbury, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press 2004) 302 pp. As the title indicates, this book is devoted to the examination of the motif of aberrance in the mythological setting of medieval Iceland. But this is by no means the only subject of interest. The book has a distinctive way of introducing the topics, is outspoken and energetic, and is never superficial. The first chapter, “Oedipus of Thebes,” is introduced to refresh our memo6 Quoted in E. H. Gombrich, “Icones Symbolicae” Symbolic images (London 1972) 181. REVIEWS 200 ries of Greek mythology, and, on the basis of familiar material, to sharpen our eyes for the task of discerning, on the ground of a variegated and often contradictory corpus, mythic realities and details. These details are ultimately used as keys to generalizations within the larger perspective of cultural history and ethnography. Oedipus “Swell-Foot” is the first cripple introduced whose lameness is outlined , or underlined, by his natural cleverness and intelligence. What goes on four feet in the morning, two feet in the day, and three feet in the evening? Experts on this sphinxian riddle are the main topic of all four chapters of the book. In spite of Oedipus’s anomaly or even thanks to it, he prevails upon the sphinx; in spite of his parents’ will to get rid of their child, he succeeds to the throne and rules as a wise, honest king. The tragedies describing the life of Oedipus were performed at the festival of Dionysus, another mythological character marked by physical and mental aberrance. Dionysus belongs to the same...