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Attitudes Towards Paganism in Medieval Irish and Old Norse Texts of the Trojan War

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Attitudes Towards Paganism in Medieval Irish and Old Norse Texts of the Trojan War CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Apollo Faculty of English (Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic) Attitudes towards Paganism in Medieval Irish and Old Norse Texts of the Trojan War Radu Razvan Stanciu St John’s College University of Cambridge This dissertation is submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2015 The thesis compares the depictions of paganism found in the Middle Irish Togail Troí (‘The Destruction of Troy’; first half of the twelfth century) and the Old Norse Trójumanna saga (‘The Story of the Trojans’; first half of the thirteenth century), which are both based on Dares Phrygius’s Late Antique De excidio Troiae historia. The two vernacular adaptations are presented in the wider context of the medieval popularity of Dares’s text. The in-depth analysis of the pagan references (most of which relate to mythology and ritual), reveals Togail Troí’s and Trójumanna saga’s general source-based approach and their shared reliance on Latin mythographic scholarship, but also a different approach concerning the literary presentation of paganism. The Irish text’s ‘Christian’ approach to the issue (as seen through authorial comments and historical contextualisation) is shown to be in contrast to the Norse text’s ‘classicising’ approach (i.e. paganism presented as in the classical sources themselves). The findings of this analysis are then compared with the literary attitudes towards paganism encountered in medieval Irish and Norse texts more widely (especially in those set in Ireland or Nordic countries). This comparison reveals a general sympathy for many pagan characters that finds some parallels in the Trojan texts as well, but also a different representation of pagan deities in the two traditions. Indeed, the Irish tendency to avoid depicting the gods as such and the opposite Norse tendency, to portray them in an explicit way (often from a pagan point of view), mirror the evidence furnished by Togail Troí and Trójumanna saga. The literary attitudes to paganism and particularly towards mythology, which are encountered in the two texts, are further explored from the point of view of authorship. It is shown that the Irish author is writing in a historiographical mould, while the Norse author is writing in what could be described as a mythographical mould. Two complementary lines of interpretation are sketched for this phenomenon. The first one emphasises the existence of two different cultures of dealing with paganism in Irish and Norse literature respectively. The second line of interpretation draws to the fore two different approaches to the author-text relationship, examined through the framework of medieval literary theory. The final chapters highlight the importance of the research both for our understanding of the unique and complex literary cultures of medieval Ireland and Iceland and for the light that can be shed on the multifaceted relationship between authors and texts in medieval literature through the prism of paganism. 1 To forgotten quills Acknowledgements This thesis would not have seen the light of day without the wide-ranging support of my supervisor, Dr Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, who has patiently read many drafts and whose contribu- tion has been crucial for various sections of the text. A great debt of gratitude is also owed to Dr Judy Quinn, who has kindly worked as second supervisor for many parts of the thesis. I have been provided with much helpful advice by Dr Rosalind Love, Professor Erich Poppe, Dr Richard Dance and Dr Elizabeth Ashman Rowe, as well as my friends Cristian Ispir and Theodor Ulieriu-Rostás. I thank each and all, any mistakes and omissions that remain are en- tirely my own. A different, but no lesser gratitude, I owe to my alma mater, St John’s College in the University of Cambridge, which has been so much to me and has made this research possible. 2 Table of contents List of abbreviations ............................................................................................................. 5 1. Introduction ….................................................................................................................. 6 1.1. Aims …...................................................................................................................... 6 1.2. Methods and structure ………………………………………………………...…. 14 2. Togail Troí and Trójumanna saga in their literary context …......................................... 17 2.1. Works, recensions, manuscripts ............................................................................. 17 2.2. Dares Phrygius’s De excidio Troiae historia …...................................................... 21 2.2.1. Origins and date ….......................................................................................... 21 2.2.2. Transmission in the Middle Ages …................................................................ 25 2.3. Medieval adaptations of Dares Phrygius …............................................................ 28 2.4. Irish and Norse classical adaptations ….................................................................. 33 2.5. Latin sources …...................................................................................................... 35 2.5.1. Ilias Latina ….................................................................................................. 35 2.5.2. Commentaries on the works of Virgil …......................................................... 37 2.5.3. The Vatican Mythographers …....................................................................... 41 2.5.4. Commentaries on Ovid’s Metamorphoses ….................................................. 44 3. Paganism in Togail Trói and Trójumanna saga ….......................................................... 47 3.1. The prologues …..................................................................................................... 47 3.2. Divine-human interaction …................................................................................... 66 3.3. Divine society …..................................................................................................... 74 3.4. Pagan ritual …......................................................................................................... 76 3.5. The Judgment of Paris …........................................................................................ 83 3.6. Conclusion ………………….................................................................................. 93 4. Paganism in Medieval Irish and Old Norse literature …................................................ 96 4.1. The pagan gods in Old Norse literature ….............................................................. 97 4.2. The pagan gods in Medieval Irish literature ......................................................... 113 4.3. Paganism in society, as depicted in Medieval Irish literature …........................... 129 4.4. Paganism in society, as depicted in Old Norse literature …................................. 142 5. Conclusions and directions for further research ........................................................... 146 3 6. Importance of the research …....................................................................................... 151 bibliography ……………………………………………...…………………………….. 152 4 List of abbreviations Cleasby-Vigfússon = An Icelandic-English Dictionary, ed. S. Crist et al., http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~kurisuto/germanic/oi_cleasbyvigfusson_about.html. Dares = Meister, F. (ed.), Daretis Phrygii de excidio Troiae historia (Leipzig, 1873).1 Dictys = Eisenhut, W. (ed.), Dictys Cretensis Ephemeridos Belli Troiani libri. A Lucio Septimio ex Graeco in Latinum sermonem translati; accedunt papyri Dictys Graeci in Aegypto inventae (Leipzig, 1873).2 eDIL = eDIL – Irish Language Dictionary, ed. G. Toner et al., http://edil.qub.ac.uk/dictionary/search.php, online edition of E.G. Quin (ed.), Contributions to a Dictionary of the Irish Language (Dublin, 1913-76) ÍF = Íslenzk fornrit, 35 vols. (Reykjavík, 1928-2014). Ilias Latina = M. Scaffai (ed.), Baebii Italici Ilias Latina (Bologna, 1982). Servius = G. Thilo, H. Hagen (eds.), Servii grammatici qui feruntur in Virgilii carmina commentarii, 3 vols. in 4 parts (Leipzig, 1881-1902), vols. I, II and III.1.3 T.s. = J. Louis-Jensen (ed.), Trójumanna saga (Copenhagen, 1963). T.Tr. = W. Stokes (ed.), Togail Troí. The Destruction of Troy (Calcutta, 1882). 1 References will be by chapter. 2 References will be by chapter and section. 3 References will be by lemma (e.g. ‘on Æneid I, 619’), thus referencing both the original work and the commentary. 5 1. Introduction 1.1. Aims This thesis is a work of comparative research dealing with two medieval texts on the Trojan War, the Middle Irish Togail Troí and the Old Norse Trójumanna saga, aiming to investigate the authorial attitudes towards paganism that can be discerned in them. At a general level, it seeks to draw from and contribute to scholarly research in two major areas, that of medieval reception of classical culture and that of comparative studies of medieval Irish and Norse literature. The research is founded on the rare opportunity provided by the existence of the aforementioned texts, namely two adaptations from the High Middle Ages, in Irish and in Norse respectively, of the same Latin text, Dares Phrygius’s Late Antique De excidio Troiae historia.4 The importance of their comparative study stems first of all from the importance of classical culture in medieval Europe. It
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