Rittersagas: Übersetzung, Überlieferung, Transmission ed. by Jürg Glauser, Susanne Kramarz-Bein (review)

The subtitle of Rittersagas announces the scope of the essays in this volume: they are mostly concerned with the transmission of the translated riddarasögur in Icelandic manuscripts, variant redactions, and adaptations. As used in this book, Übersetzung refers to interlingual translation; Überlieferung to intralingual translation and transmission; and Transmission to intralingual revision and adaptation (p. 4). The volume contains a dozen essays, not all, strictly speaking, devoted to the topic announced by the title. The publication has had a rather long gestation period to judge by the comments in footnotes of two contributors (Vera Johanterwage and Hélène Tétrel) that their essays were written for the conference in 2004 that bore the same title as this volume.

The various essays are preceded by Glauser’s introduction and explication of the terms Übersetzung, Überlieferung, and Transmission in respect to the riddarasögur. This he does by means of an explication of Marie de France’s lay Chèvrefeuille, which was translated in thirteenth-century Norway with the title Geitarlauf, that is, “Honeysuckle.” Glauser convincingly argues that this very short lay is illustrative of a number of phenomena that are significant for our understanding of the riddarasögur. Both at the beginning and the end of Geitarlauf, the narrator remarks on the existence and transmission of the lay in several languages; the use of the various senses in its transmission and reception; their use to draw attention to the dialogic and performative aspects of the tale; and finally the importance of love as the inspiration to narrative, in this case Tristram’s tale, and in respect to the riddarasögur, their origin and transmission. Geitarlauf is the shortest of the lays, indeed the shortest of the riddarasögur, and with his interpretation, Glauser has achieved a remarkable introduction to the essays that follow.

Susanne Kramarz-Bein’s contribution, “Neuronale Vernetzung in der Literaturwissenschaft am Beispiel mittelalterlicher literarischer Milieubildungen in Skandinavien” (pp. 15–43), a shorter version of which was published in 2007, focuses on the thirteenth-century Old West Norse Karlamagnús saga and Þiðreks saga and their Old East Norse (Danish and Swedish) versions. Kramarz-Bein analyzes the literature produced in the courtly Scandinavian milieu beginning in the thirteenth and extending into the fifteenth century from the perspective of the natural sciences’ network theory. She demonstrates convincingly that the application of a “literary network theory” can contribute constructively to describing and understanding the inter-Scandinavian milieu network from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries.

Roger Andersson’s essay, “Die Eufemiavisor—Literatur für die Oberklasse” (pp. 45–69), focuses on the three oldest Swedish literary texts, Hertig Fredrik av Normandie, Herr Ivan Lejonriddaren, and Flores och Blanzeflor. The three rhymed poems, in Knittelvers, were produced under the aegis of Queen Eufemia—hence the appellation Eufemiavisor—the German wife of King Hákon V Magnússon (r. 1299–1319) of Norway. Andersson provides a most useful overview, beginning with the identity, life, and patronage of Queen Eufemia, and the dating of the poems; continues to a discussion of the sources and their genres, the manuscripts and editions; and concludes with a short discussion of the poems’ milieu and the question whether this courtly literature is to be situated in an ecclesiastical milieu or not. The author concludes that the Eufemiavisor were produced for the nobility and enjoyed by them during the first two centuries of their existence; not until the sixteenth century did they become a part of more popular literature. Like the riddarasögur, the Swedish poems originated in a courtly milieu in Norway; indeed, Herr Ivan and Flores och Blanzeflor have their counterpart in the earlier Old Norse translations Ívens saga and Flóres saga ok Blankiflúr.

The latter saga, its Old French source, and the Swedish version are the subject of Helle Degnbol’s “‘Fair Words’: The French Poem Floire et Blancheflor, the Old...