Búi and the blámaðr: Comprehending racial others in Kjalnesinga Saga

Autor:	Basil Arnould Price
Rok vydání:	2020
Předmět:	Cultural Studies History Literature and Literary Theory Anthropology common Colonialism Subaltern Medieval literature language.human_language Philosophy common.group Icelanders language Commonwealth HERO Narrative Icelandic
Zdroj:	postmedieval. 11:442-450
ISSN:	2040-5979 2040-5960
DOI:	10.1057/s41280-020-00195-4
Popis:	This essay focuses on an understudied Old Icelandic saga, Kjalnesinga Saga (c.1310–1320), to examine medieval Icelanders’ discursive construction of race following the collapse of the independent Icelandic commonwealth. Employing postcolonial and critical-race theories from K. Anthony Appiah, Homi Bhabha, Achille Mbembe, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, this essay posits post-Commonwealth Iceland conceived of race as a spectrum of comprehensibility. The saga affords narrative agency to the assimilated and culturally comprehensible Irish hero, Bui, and casts him as a surrogate for Iceland’s colonial struggle. No such agency is granted to the blamaðr (black-man), a monster sent against Bui by the Norwegian King, Haraldr Fair-Haired (c.850–932). The blamaðr is subaltern: inaccessible outside Iceland’s subordinating narrative, bestializing rhetoric, or Bui’s interpretation. Kjalnesinga Saga’s racial discourse challenges modern conceptualizations of Scandinavia’s homogeneity and offers medieval Iceland as another space to explore constructions of race.
Databáze:	OpenAIRE
Externí odkaz:	https://explore.openaire.eu/search/publication?articleId=doi_________::6d6fe3242ddcd315be25446c9453bbb5 https://doi.org/10.1057/s41280-020-00195-4 Zobrazit plný text záznamu Full text from SpringerLink