Overview

A detailed literary study of fourteenth-century poetry composed in honour of a controversial thirteenth-century bishop. Vernacular poetry was a powerful influence in fourteenth-century Icelandic elite literary culture, even to the extent of providing the means of elevating a local bishop, Guðmundr Arason, to sainthood. Three Icelandic poets, Abbots Arngrímr Brandsson and Árni Jónsson, and Lawman Einarr Gilsson, composed impressive encomia of Guðmundr, with the intention of recording the holy bishop's sanctity in the language of contemporary religious devotion and to persuade Church authorities in both Scandinavia and the wider Christian world to canonize him. While the local campaign ultimately failed to sway the Catholic Church, it did succeed in producing a significant corpus of vernacular religious poetry, unmatched in combining the traditional diction and metres of Old Norse skaldic verse with the vernacular poetics of affective piety and Christian hermeneutics. This important group of poems is examined here for the first time as literary works. The manuscript context of the Guðmundr poetry is investigated in the first chapter. The next three chapters offer a detailed analysis of the poems themselves while the final chapters situate the Guðmundr poetry within the milieu of the vernacular learning that flourished particularly in mid-fourteenth-century Icelandic bishoprics and monasteries. They also explore the relationship between contemporary prose sagas of Guðmundr Arason and the poetry composed in his honour, which, it is argued, offers figural interpretations of the substance of the prose texts.

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Author:   Margaret Clunies Ross
Publisher:   Boydell & Brewer Ltd
Imprint:   D.S. Brewer
ISBN:  

9781843847731

ISBN 10:   1843847736
Pages:   194
Publication Date:   17 February 2026
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  College/higher education ,  Professional & Vocational ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Not yet available  
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Table of Contents

Contents Acknowledgements Abbreviations Editorial Conventions Technical Terms Introduction 1 Three Poets for a Saint: The Manuscript Context of the Poetry in the D-version of Guðmundar saga biskups. 2 The Guðmundr Poetry of Einarr Gilsson 3 Lilja and the Guðmundardrápur 4 'Much praise in flowing diction': The Guðmundardrápur between the Skaldic Art and the Language of Religious Devotion 5 A Priestly Poetics 6 Guðmundar saga biskups D and Arngrímr's Guðmundardrápa Conclusion Appendices 1 Kennings and other Periphrases for Guðmundr Arason in the Poetry of Einarr Gilsson 2 Kennings and other Periphrases for Guðmundr Arason in Arngrímr Brandsson's Guðmundardrápa (Arngr Gd) and his Lausavísur 1-9 3 Kennings and other Periphrases for Guðmundr Arason in Árni Jónsson's Guðmundardrápa (Árni Gd) 4 Geisli and the Guðmundr Poems 5 Arngrímr Brandsson's Lausavísur 1-9 References Index

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Author Information

MARGARET CLUNIES ROSS is an Emeritus Professor of English Language and Early English Literature at the University of Sydney and Adjunct Professor, School of Humanities, Adelaide University. She has published widely on Old Norse-Icelandic literature, including Norse mythology, Old Norse skaldic poetry, and Old Icelandic sagas. In 2018 she was appointed a Knight (Riddari) of the Icelandic Order of the Falcon for her services to Icelandic literature.

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