Handbook of Pre-Modern Nordic Memory Studies

Interdisciplinary Approaches

Jürg Glauser, Pernille Hermann, Stephen A. Mitchell, Jürg Glauser, Pernille Hermann, Stephen A. Mitchell

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9783110431483
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism History & Theory
• Index: Literature

In recent years, the field of Memory Studies has emerged as a key approach in the Humanities and Social Sciences, and has increasingly shown its ability to open new windows on Nordic Studies as well. The entries in this book document the work-to-date of this approach on the pre-modern Nordic world (mainly the Viking Age and the Middle Ages, but including as well both earlier and later periods). Given that Memory Studies is an ever expanding critical strategy, the approximately eighty contributors in this volume also discuss the potential for future research in this area. Topics covered range from texts to performance to visual and other aspects of material culture, all approached from within an interdisciplinary framework. International specialists, coming from such relevant fields as archaeology, mythology, history of religion, folklore, history, law, art, literature, philology, language, and mediality, offer assessments on the relevance of Memory Studies to their disciplines and show it at work in case studies. Finally, this handbook demonstrates the various levels of culture where memory had a critical impact in the pre-modern North and how deeply embedded the role of memory is in the material itself.

Part I:Disciplines, Traditions and Perspectives

Culture and Communication

Jürg Glauser

I: 1Rhetoric

1Definition

The most helpful way to express the complex relationship between rhetoric and memory is perhaps by means of a chiastic figure of thought: on the one hand, such a figure means examining the relationships between internal and external aspects of memory that draw on concepts of rhetoric; on the other hand, it relates to observations about the relationships between various representations of rhetoric which become apparent in conceptions of memory.

At the point when rhetoric becomes established in classical, that is, ancient Greece, it is already apparent that the idea of oratory ‘as an art’ is intimately related to two conceptualisations of memory: memory as an aesthetic theory, and memory as a technical skill which may be acquired. A conclusion would be that rhetoric could not exist without concepts of memory. Only in the early modern period did memoria become disassociated from rhetoric and instead was considered to be a part of logic and ethics. Up to this point, memoria played a key role in the preparation of speeches and it is therefore not surprising that it was granted a pre-eminent position in theories of rhetoric. Memoria is the last phase of preparing a speech, in which the speaker – after having found, collected and ordered the material in the two initial phases of inventio (invention) and dispositio (arrangement) and then transformed the ideas and structures developed in these two phases into verbal form in the elocutio (style) – memorises the speech with the help of existing techniques and learnable memory aids, before practicing the oral presentation. As the fourth of five so-called canons of rhetoric, memoria (memory) is situated between elocutio and actio (delivery), and thus occupies an important place between the planning and preparation of a speech and its delivery as an actual presentation. In a metaphorical sense, memoria therefore mediates between what the speaker cultivated ‘internally’ and developed in his or her thoughts and that which the speaker aims to share with the outside world as a specific act of communication; within the canons of rhetoric, memoria thus renders the public effect of a speech possible (comparable to the writing down of a text in literary communication).

The dynamic and extraordinarily performative function of memoria in classical rhetoric is apparent even in its position within the five canons of rhetoric. Within this system, memoria occupies a central role in accomplishing the main aim of a speech – and hence of rhetoric – which arguably lies in influencing the listeners so that they may adopt a specific point of view or execute certain actions.

But on the other hand – reinforcing the reciprocal dependence between rhetoric and memory – it must not be overlooked that when narrated, memory employs all of language’s abundant facets. This entails that thinking about and discussing memory is always in a fundamental way dependent on rhetoric, that discourses about reasoning and communication can only be grasped through the vocabulary of rhetoric. Such a broad understanding of rhetoric is, therefore, not limited to the single goal of instigating the audience to perform a specific, often immediate action by means of an eloquent oration. In such a broader definition, the concept of rhetoric is understood as one, if not the, most central and encompassing idea behind theories of language, aesthetics and literature, which defines all linguistic utterances (as well as language-based pictoral representations) from both a historical-diachronic and a typological-methodological perspective, and which may be analysed through such theoretical frame-works.

The close relationship between memory and rhetoric is observable in very different areas throughout the process of analysing historical, linguistic sources. Within the present emphasis on the memory culture of the pre-modern North, this point – the analysis of the linguistic composition of narrative texts (especially within a rhetorical text-analysis which is aimed at discovering diverse phenomena within memory theory) – is especially relevant for the field of historical narratology. Furthermore, it also adds an important dimension to our understanding of how the learned written culture of the Latin Middle Ages was transferred into the Latin and vernacular literature of the Nordic countries (e.g. in providing an analytical focus on cultural history and the sociology of literature, which delineates the role of remembering within the larger frame-work of medieval scholarly pursuits; see, for example, Lausberg 1960, especially II, cf. memoria, μνεμε, mémoire; Historisches Wörterbuch der Rhetorik 1–7, 1992–2005, s.v. Antike, Barock, Humanismus, memoria, Mittelalter, Reformation, Renaissance; Pethes and Ruchatz 2001, s.v. Mnemotechnik, Rhetorik; Oexle 2002; Ottmers 2007).

2State of research

Drawing on a division which reaches back to Aristotle, the medieval understanding of memory applies a distinct, two-fold division of the concept. On the one hand, memory is perceived as an innate competence and thus common to all humankind (memoria naturalis). On the other hand, this inherent ability may be significantly supported and advanced by the use of mnemonic technics and instruments (memoria artificialis) (see e.g. Hajdu 1936; Yates 1966; Carruthers 1990, 1998; Berns and Neuber 1993; Heimann-Seelbach 2000; Meierhofer 2010). It is evident that medieval theories of memory are concerned with both areas, much as classical teaching was as well, and much like modern philological and literary medieval studies are interested in the theoretical-aesthetic and the practical-technical aspects of remembering (see Carruthers 1990, 1998 and others); however, neither category of memory is represented in coherent, systematic or theoretical form in Old Norse texts, and thus may not readily be compared with influential and comprehensive classical or medieval Latin theories and handbooks which makes it necessary to examine and refer to individual case studies and implicit forms of expression as a means of trying to establish how Old Norse memory culture imagined rhetorical compositions of memory, and which role it assigned memory in the rhetorical process. Yet even modern scholarship only started to discuss this complex relationship between memory and rhetoric in recent years.

There exist, however, a small number of very instructive and notable studies which engage with the influence of classical rhetoric on Old Norse literature and discuss corresponding ‘native’ examples in Old Norse texts. In general, however, it may be observed that if rhetoric was discussed as an independent subject in Old Norse texts at all, it was considered largely for its contribution to stylistic aspects of narrative texts. Thus, earlier studies generally focus on the rhetorical effect of differing styles of narration within the sagas (see Halvorsen 1982; Þorleifur Hauksson and Þórir Óskarsson 1994, 13–36). In a similar vein, Lie (1937) and Knirk (1981; the latter referring primarily to Lausberg 1960) primarily analysed dialogues and speeches in the sagas of kings, while Lönnroth (1976, 2011) examined the rhetoric style of narration in classical sagas of the Icelanders.

Another area in which rhetoric appears as a central focus, and which has received detailed scholarly attention, are the grammatical treatises and Old Norse theories of language more broadly (see Dahlerup and Finnur Jónsson 1884–1886; Bjørn Magnússon Ólsen 1884–1886; Holtsmark 1981; Raschellà 1982; Beuerle 2010). Especially the so-called Third Grammatical Treatise, attributed to the Icelandic author Óláfr Þórðarson hvítaskáld (c. 1210–1259) deserves attention as a key tract in the history of rhteoric in Iceland. The work is dated to c. 1250 and features a section called “Málskrúðsfræði” [rhetoric], which presents an intense engagement with, and appropriation of, Latin models of rhetoric. Rhetoric is seen primarily as a means of creating aesthetically appealing and stylistically adequate poetry (cf. the edition by Krömmelbein 1998 and more recent studies by Clunies Ross 2018 and Wellendorf 2018). Margaret Clunies Ross was the first to present a broad analysis of the rootedness of Skáldskaparmál [The Language of Poetry] of the Prose Edda in language theory and poetics within the learned continental literature of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and to further discuss the relevant aspects of rhetoric (Clunies Ross 1987); however, these analyses lack systematic references to memory as a distinct focus, and for large parts, no references to memory are made at all.

Even to a casual observer it quickly becomes apparent that all studies which specifically and jointly address rhetoric and memory of Old Norse narrative sources are of a more recent date. Such recent studies may be concerned with aspects of mediality, a fundamental category for theories both of rhetoric and memory (Glauser 2007; Heslop 2014, 2018), or with diverse rhetorical methodologies which both classical and Old Norse mythological poetry employ to generate memory and enable remembering, such as, for example, rhetorical aspects of space, the senses, or memory (Hermann 2014, 2017b). Others analyse the impressive and thus mnemotechnically especially suitable imagery of skaldic kennings (Bergsveinn Birgisson 2010; Malm 2016) or (even more recently) the permutation of linguistic theories, relations of texts and imagery, performativity and the resulting creation of memory in the Second Grammatical Treatise (Schneeberger forthcoming). It must be stressed that these studies demonstrate how besides delineating the hugely influential contribution of the classical rhetorical tradition (mediated through continental Latin learned culture), it is also possible to discover aspects which draw on the Nordic tradition itself when outlining the relationship between rhetoric and memory. This becomes especially evident if one looks beyond the Middle Ages and, for example, turns to Icelandic Baroque literature of the seventeenth century, in which a very telling amalgamation of traditional classical rhetoric and Old Norse poetological tradition becomes apparent. Especially the very well represented memorial poetry from this era, with its focus on remembering the dead, can include highly complex figures of commemorative poetry (e.g. funeral poems, funeral elegies, consolation poems) and rhetoric (see Margrét Eggertsdóttir 2014; Þórunn Sigurðardóttir 2015; review in Glauser 2016).

Yet even in light of these recent studies, the topic has not yet been systematically and coherently addressed. Attempts to formulate a theory of the rhetoric of native forms are still at the very early stages, and in the few studies which do address rhetoric, memory theories or mnemonic techniques are represented only marginally. Moreover, none of the large and influential surveys dealing with memory, rhetoric and grammar in medieval Latin culture (Yates 1966; Carruthers 1990, 1998; Copeland and Sluiter 2009) makes any references to the traditions of Scandinavian countries, suggesting that Nordic studies as of yet lack a comprehensive and theory-based interpretation of the relationship between rhetoric and memory, and that the present short contribution may only sketch some preliminary observations.

3Pre-modern Nordic material

As has been mentioned several times, with few but important exceptions, the extant Nordic material is not theoretically explicit but rather narratively implicit in its treatment of rhetoric and memory and, as a part of this relationship, also in its treatment of media and mediality. This fact entails that these sources must be examined on the basis of individual (often only implicitly developed) passages and that frequently, only a goal-oriented analysis will help elucidate such matters. Yet closer looks reveal that this corpus is indeed diverse, extensive, of high value for scholarship and, at times, unique. A short discussion of selected examples helps outline this point.

The Scandinavian tradition of the Middle Ages contains numerous sources which may be classified as belonging to the area of mnemotechnics (cf. Carruthers 1990, 1998; Pethes and Ruchatz 2001, 380–383; Hermann 2017b). In these cases, as in many others, the classical theories of places (loci / topoi) and of topology are a frequently used means of supporting memory. Much as in other traditions, such places may be natural (e.g. landscape, nature, the human body)...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• List of Illustrations
• Abbreviations
• Pre-Modern Nordic Memory Studies: An Introduction
• Part I: Disciplines, Traditions and Perspectives
• Part II: Case Studies
• Part III: Texts and Images
• Colour Plates
• Select Bibliography of Pre-Modern Nordic Memory Studies
• Contributors
• Index