Gender, Violence, and the Past in Edda and Saga

After completing his doctoral thesis at the University of Oxford, David Clark held Stipendiary Lectureships at a number of Oxford Colleges, before his appointment as Lecturer at the University of Leicester. His research focuses on medieval gender and sexuality and the modern reception of medieval literature, and his publications include Between Medieval Men: Male Friendship and Desire in Early Medieval Literature (OUP, 2009). He is translator of The Saga of Bishop Thorlak (Viking Society for Northern Research, forthcoming 2011), and co-editor of Blood, Sex, Malory: the Morte Darthur, its sources, and reception (Boydell, 2011); Anglo-Saxon Culture and the Modern Imagination (Boydell & Brewer, 2010), and Old Norse Made New: Essays on the Post-Medieval Reception of Old Norse Literature and Culture (Viking Society for Northern Research, 2007). He is currently writing a book on friendship in medieval European literature.

David Clark goes beyond the well-known figures of vengeful wives causing the deaths of multiple husbands, or loyal sisters intent on vengeance for their brothers, to explore a wider and more interesting range of ways in which gender inter-acts with violence.

• Abbreviations ; Introduction ; 1. Undermining Vengeance: Distancing and Anti-feminism in the Gudrun poems ; 2. Heroic Homosociality and Homophobia in the Helgi poems ; 3. Kin-slaying in the Poetic Edda: the End of the World? ; 4. Sexual Themes and the Heroic Past in Gisla saga ; 5. Violence in Moderation: the Church and Vengeance in the Sagas ; 6. Manslaughter and Misogyny: Women and Revenge in Sturlunga Saga ; Epilogue ; Bibliography ; Index