Konflikt dvojí stylistiky v islandských ságách: litotes versus superlativ

• Authors: Ivánková Markéta

Title variants

EN

Conflict of two poetical elements in the islandic sagas: litotes versus superlative

• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

The style of the Old Norse saga genres is sometimes reduced to two elements: litotes, taken as an embodiment of the traditional family sagas, and superlative, symbolizing the main feature of the late chivalric and lying sagas. This scheme can be useful only to some extent, as an auxiliary criterion for describing tendencies of the genre development. However, the litotes-superlative generalization eliminates much of the stylistic variation. Thus, further analyses should be based on more elements, and their functions in the narrative, as well as their usefulness to the respective ideology, should be considered. The family sagas tend to use litotes and various forms of indirect assessment, making the heroes hardly flawless, so that the audience needs to create their own opinion based on established phrases. The role of the audience of the chivalric and lying sagas is more passive, the heroes’ qualities are stated directly, often as a hyperbole, making strict difference between the pure good and pure evil, and guiding the audience to the right values.

Keywords

CS

staroseverský; rodové ságy; rytířské ságy; lživé ságy; litotes

EN

Old Norse; family sagas; chivalric sagas; lying sagas; litotes

Discipline

• PHILOLOGY_&_LINGUISTICS: PHILOLOGY & LINGUISTICS

• Publisher: Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Arts, Czech Republic
• Journal: Svět literatury – Časopis pro novodobé literatury (World of Literature – Journal for Modern Literatures)
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 52
• Pages: 144-152

Contributors

author

Ivánková Markéta

• Univerzita Karlova