Gender and Genre in Medieval Chivalric Rímur
type: CreativeWork
description: The increasing influence of continental chivalric romances on medieval Icelandic and Norwegian literature had a profound effect on discourses of gender in Norse texts, reflected in the wave of romance translations and original romances created over the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries. This thesis looks at how these questions of appropriate gendered behaviour continue to be negotiated in chivalric rímur (rhymed narrative poetry) of the fourteenth, fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. There has been very little literary criticism of medieval rímur at all, and while aspects of gender in these texts are sometimes touched upon in studies of individual rímur cycles, there has yet to be a genre-wide study specifically of gender in rímur. The basis for this thesis is a corpus of twenty-three pre-Reformation chivalric rímur cycles, which has been used for both corpus-wide surveys of gendered kenning types and character introductions and as a source of case studies through which to examine recurring themes in these texts more closely. The first part of this thesis examines the evidence for the performance context of medieval rímur and how this may have influenced the development of the form, downplaying the moral messages that underlie many of the romances in favour of ever more spectacular battle scenes in an effort to keep the audience entertained. As well as affecting the types of stories told by rímur poets, these conditions of performance also influenced the poets’ conceptualisation of themselves as poets, an effect particularly visible in the introductory mansöngur verses that became an increasingly integral part of the rímur form. The next chapter looks at the construction of masculinity in chivalric rímur, using the portrayal of the stories’ pro- and antagonists to argue that the idealised form of masculinity in these texts is inherently aristocratic, white, heterosexual and able-bodied. While the Norse adaptions of courtly romances were influential in shaping n…
abstract: The increasing influence of continental chivalric romances on medieval Icelandic and Norwegian literature had a profound effect on discourses of gender in Norse texts, reflected in the wave of romance translations and original romances created over the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries. This thesis looks at how these questions of appropriate gendered behaviour continue to be negotiated in chivalric rímur (rhymed narrative poetry) of the fourteenth, fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. There has been very little literary criticism of medieval rímur at all, and while aspects of gender in these texts are sometimes touched upon in studies of individual rímur cycles, there has yet to be a genre-wide study specifically of gender in rímur. The basis for this thesis is a corpus of twenty-three pre-Reformation chivalric rímur cycles, which has been used for both corpus-wide surveys of gendered kenning types and character introductions and as a source of case studies through which to examine recurring themes in these texts more closely. The first part of this thesis examines the evidence for the performance context of medieval rímur and how this may have influenced the development of the form, downplaying the moral messages that underlie many of the romances in favour of ever more spectacular battle scenes in an effort to keep the audience entertained. As well as affecting the types of stories told by rímur poets, these conditions of performance also influenced the poets’ conceptualisation of themselves as poets, an effect particularly visible in the introductory mansöngur verses that became an increasingly integral part of the rímur form. The next chapter looks at the construction of masculinity in chivalric rímur, using the portrayal of the stories’ pro- and antagonists to argue that the idealised form of masculinity in these texts is inherently aristocratic, white, heterosexual and able-bodied. While the Norse adaptions of courtly romances were influential in shaping n…
author: Colwill, Lee
language: eng
keywords: Old Norse, medieval literature, gender, chivalric literature, rímur, medieval Icelandic literature, poetry
license: https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/
date published: 2022-02-01
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:06Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.87034