French philosophers and the sagas

I just read an interesting article in Scandinavian Studies about Svarfdæla saga that does the most remarkable job of quoting Foucault, Lacan, and Satre IN THE SAME sentence as quotes from the saga, as if those philosophers were commenting on the saga itself.

My sense of time and place is all whacked now.

Comments

ג. ג. said…
Link to the article?
September 8, 2009 at 9:46 PM
Lissy said…
It was not online, it was an actual book! Well, a bound series. Thought you liked books? But if you are curious, the article discusses a rather non-sagaish female character, who gets tortured in late-medieval fashion by a man whom the author of the article argued was a sadist suffering from misogynism (the sort of analysis I really dislike in that it somehow thinks the characters themselves motivate plot). But the author redeemed herself by then starting to talk about female language and male language, and the power involved. The male requires that the female agree with him, and in this somehow acknowledges the efficacy of female speech while trying to control it.
September 8, 2009 at 11:49 PM
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