A poetics of ambiguity : history, fiction and the materiality of language

Icelandic literature reveals a pronounced taste for polysemy and ambiguity. This is partly due to the practice of scaldic poetry, rich in literary allusion and play on the double meaning of terms. This ambiguity also appears in the sagas, both in the dialogue, which is often laconic and vague, and in the motivations of the characters, which are often obscure. While sagas present themselves as accounts of the past, they make no statement about the veracity of the facts recounted. Half-history, half-fiction, they seem above all to have been composed to be read aloud to an audience requiring a certain effort of interpretation. This literary attitude is also influenced by the exegetical practices of medieval Christianity. The result is a narrative literature that explores the equivocal nature of human relationships. At the same time, these narratives are strongly indebted to a poetic tradition, that of the scaldes, which pushes the work on the signifier very far. The fourth and final lecture will deal with the poetics of ambiguity that characterize the greatest sagas, including Egill's Saga and Grettir's Saga. Their main characters are poets, and a possible solution to the enigma they present emerges from studying the materiality of their language, as well as that of the authors of the sagas that feature them.