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Mackenzie, Colin Peter (2014) Vernacular Psychologies in Old Norse- Icelandic and Old English

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Mackenzie, Colin Peter (2014) Vernacular Psychologies in Old Norse- Icelandic and Old English Mackenzie, Colin Peter (2014) Vernacular psychologies in Old Norse- Icelandic and Old English. PhD thesis. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/5290/ Copyright and moral rights for this work are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This work cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Enlighten:Theses http://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] Vernacular Psychologies in Old Norse-Icelandic and Old English Colin Peter Mackenzie MA, MPhil Submitted in fulfilment of the requirement for the Degree of PhD English Language School of Critical Studies College of Arts University of Glasgow June 2014 2 Abstract This thesis examines the vernacular psychology presented in Old Norse-Icelandic texts. It focuses on the concept hugr , generally rendered in English as ‘mind, soul, spirit’, and explores the conceptual relationships between emotion, cognition and the body. It argues that despite broad similarities, Old Norse-Icelandic and Old English vernacular psychology differ more than has previously been acknowledged. Furthermore, it shows that the psychology of Old Norse-Icelandic has less in common with its circumpolar neighbours than proposed by advocates of Old Norse-Icelandic shamanism. The thesis offers a fresh interpretation of Old Norse-Icelandic psychology which does not rely on cross-cultural evidence from other Germanic or circumpolar traditions. In particular, I demonstrate that emotion and cognition were not conceived of ‘hydraulically’ as was the case in Old English, and that hugr was not thought to leave the body either in animal form or as a person’s breath. I show that Old Norse-Icelandic psychology differs from the Old English tradition, and argue that the Old English psychological model is a specific elaboration of the shared psychological inheritance of Germanic whose origins require further study. These differences between the two languages have implications for the study of psychological concepts in Proto-Germanic, as I argue that there are fewer semantic components which can be reliably reconstructed for the common ancestor of the North and West Germanic languages. As a whole, the thesis applies insights from cross- cultural linguistics and psychology in order to show how Old Norse-Icelandic psychological concepts differ not only from contemporary Germanic and circumpolar traditions but also from the Present Day English concepts used to describe them. The thesis comprises four chapters and conclusion. Chapter 1 introduces the field of study and presents the methodologies and sources used. It introduces the range of cross- cultural variety in psychological concepts, and places Old Norse-Icelandic hugr and its Old English analogue mōd in a typological perspective. Chapter 2 reviews previous approaches to early Germanic psychology and introduces the major strand of research that forms the background to this study: Lockett’s (2011) proposal that Old English vernacular psychology operated in terms of a ‘hydraulic model’, where the mōd would literally boil and seethe within a person’s chest in response to strong emotions. Chapter 3 outlines the native Old Norse-Icelandic psychological model by examining indigenously produced vernacular texts. It looks first at the claims that hugr could leave the body in animal form or as a person’s breath. It then describes the relationship between emotion, cognition and the body in Old Norse-Icelandic texts and contrasts this with the Old English system. Chapter 4 examines the foreign influences which could potentially account for the differences between the Old English and Old Norse-Icelandic systems. It looks first at the imported medical traditions which were known in medieval Scandinavia at the time Old Norse-Icelandic texts were being committed to writing. Next it considers the psychology of Christian tradition from the early Old Icelandic Homily Book to late-fourteenth-century devotional poetry. Finally, it examines the representation of emotion and the body in the translated Anglo-Norman and Old French texts produced at the court of Hákon Hákonarson and explores how this was transposed to native romances composed in Old Norse-Icelandic. The conclusion summarises the findings of the thesis and presents a proposal for the methodology of studying medieval psychological concepts with directions for further research. 3 Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................................. 2 Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................ 6 Author’s Declaration .............................................................................................................. 7 Chapter 1: The Mind in Cross-Linguistic Perspective ........................................................... 8 1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 8 1.1 The mind across languages and cultures................................................................. 10 1.2 Hugr and mōd ......................................................................................................... 14 2 Theoretical assumptions and methods ........................................................................... 15 2.1 Language, metalanguage, and vernacular psychology ........................................... 16 2.2 The Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach ...................................................... 19 2.3 NSM applied to ethnopsychological constructs...................................................... 24 2.4 Discussion ............................................................................................................... 28 2.5 NSM and historical linguistics ................................................................................ 32 2.6 Text selection and corpus ....................................................................................... 34 2.7 Methods of analysis ................................................................................................ 38 3 Summary ....................................................................................................................... 42 Chapter 2: Previous Work on Germanic Psychology .......................................................... 43 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 43 2 Lumping and splitting ................................................................................................... 43 3 Cross-Germanic evidence .............................................................................................. 47 4 Conceptual metaphor and embodied realism ................................................................ 50 4.1 The hydraulic model ............................................................................................... 53 4.2 The semantics of mōd ............................................................................................. 55 Chapter 3: Vernacular Psychology in Old Norse-Icelandic ................................................. 57 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 57 2 Breath, wind, and troll-women ...................................................................................... 58 2.1 Spinning psychological yarns ................................................................................. 64 2.2 Hugr and breath ...................................................................................................... 67 3 Shape-shifting and out-of-body experiences: hugr , hamr , and fylgja ........................... 72 3.1 Hugr and hamr ........................................................................................................ 73 3.2 Fylgjur and manna hugir ........................................................................................ 79 3.3 Fylgjur in Old Norse-Icelandic ............................................................................... 81 4 3.4 Hugr in dreams ....................................................................................................... 82 3.5 Conclusions ............................................................................................................. 89 4 Hugr , hjarta and corporeal psychology ........................................................................ 91 4.1 The heart in Old Norse-Icelandic............................................................................ 94 4.2 Hjarta as ‘life-muscle’ ............................................................................................ 94 4.3 Hjarta and character ............................................................................................... 97 4.4 The physical nature of the heart ............................................................................ 100 4.5 Hugr , hjarta and courage .....................................................................................
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