Pafnutius and Skírnir's Journey: A Discussion of Two Medieval Plays

218 Pages·2018·24.236 MB·English

by  Frands Herschend

OCCASIONAL PAPERS IN ARCHAEOLOGY 65

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Frands Herschend

Pafnutius and
Skírnir’s Journey
A Discussion of Two Medieval Plays

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Frands Herschend, Department of Archaeology and Ancient History. Box 626, Uppsala
University, SE-751 26 Uppsala. Sweden.

Distribution: [email protected]

© Frands Herschend 2018
Language revision: Elisabet Green
ISSN 1100-6358
ISBN 978-91-506-2709-1
Printed in Sweden by Kph Trycksaksbolaget AB, Uppsala 2018.
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Contents
Foreword ............................................................................................. 7
Was there a 10th Century Northwest European Drama? ..................... 9
Part One Hrotsvit ................................................................................. 15
‘Nor See Anyone Performing Plays’ ................................................... 17
The Reception of Hrotsvit’s Plays ................................................. 17
The Royal Canoness Abbey .......................................................... 21
The Role of Educated Upper-Class Women ................................. 26
Playwright in Residence ................................................................ 30
Hrotsvit’s Failed Project ................................................................ 33
Hrotsvit’s Approach .......................................................................... 36
The Drama Section....................................................................... 36
Conclusion ................................................................................... 51
Hrotsvit’s Pafnutius ........................................................................... 52
Introduction ................................................................................. 52
Legend and Liturgy as Drama ....................................................... 56
A Note on the Translation ............................................................ 63
Two Scenes from Pafnutius ................................................................ 68
Scene II: The Forum in Alexandria ............................................... 68
Scene III: In Front of Thaïs’ House ............................................... 70
Gossip and Science ....................................................................... 74
Part Two Skírnir .................................................................................... 79
Structuring Dialogue ......................................................................... 81
Introduction ................................................................................. 81
Speaker Notations ......................................................................... 84
Things Heard and Seen ................................................................ 93
The Stage and its Scenery .................................................................. 97
The Theatrical Setting .................................................................. 97
Performance and Space ................................................................. 98
The Hall as Arena ....................................................................... 103
Conclusion ................................................................................. 122
Translating Fǫr Skírnis as a Play ...................................................... 125
A Note on the Translation. ......................................................... 126
Fǫr Skírnis as Historical Drama ....................................................... 132
Pantomimes ................................................................................ 132
Spare the Rod and Spoil the Child? ............................................ 135
The Distorted Myth ................................................................... 137
The Supportive Roles.................................................................. 140
The Dramatic Climax ................................................................. 142
The Main Characters .................................................................. 144
The Story .................................................................................... 148
Conclusion ................................................................................. 166
Part Three Comparison ....................................................................... 171
Fǫr Skírnis and Pafnutius ................................................................. 173
Paired Differences and Similarities .............................................. 173
Dramaturgical Similarities .......................................................... 177
Conclusion: Authors and their Plays ........................................... 192
References ............................................................................................ 195
Foreword

THERE IS SELDOM any need to write a scholarly book about a subject related to
past cultures. An article or a contribution to an anthology may be important
enough to fill a limited need, but a longer work has boring parts and they tend
to travesty the concept.
If a need is felt, it is most likely the author who feels it – as in this case.
However, to begin with no commitment whatsoever was involved in the case.
Working on a synthesis of Late Iron Age South Scandinavia, which I still do, it
became obvious that some of the poems in the Poetic Edda represented a Late
Viking Age critique of the elite that emerged in the early 6th century CE. This
was an important fact, since we do not expect Scandinavian prehistory to
express historically based criticism of its own past as a way of commenting upon
its own present. We reserve that kind of historicism to cultures characterised by
literacy and formal education, i.e. something rather un-Viking.
Some of the Eddic poems belonged among the dialogical plays con-
vincingly singled out by Terry Gunnell (1995), whose perspective was ethno-
logical. Gunnell’s research was ground-breaking, but in addition to being plays
with links to folklore and mythology, I thought that some of these plays stood
out as burlesque historical comedies linked to a group of mimetic performances
meant to entertain Saxon, Norman, Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian elites with
mimetic theatre productions.
Moreover, compared to the first contemporary religious plays these
occasional ones were sophisticated in a way that would stand out as anachro-
nistic to many researchers, not least those who comprise an evolutionary view
on the history of theatre. There is no reason to believe that this book will
convince a majority of its readers. Many will probably never finish it, but in the
present case, and despite its boring parts, this is of little importance, inasmuch
as the very situation including the book’s likely future reception has created a
need to argue a case: The well-known mythological poem Skírnismál is a
burlesque wedding entertainment shaped as a mimetic play – a historical com-
edy in a historical setting – mocking the past.
Uppsala June 2018
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