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The Ecology of Metre The Retrospective Methods Network Newsletter The Ecology of Metre A special issue of RMN Newsletter Edited by Ilya Sverdlov and Frog № 11 Winter 2015/2016 RMN Newsletter is edited by Frog Helen F. Leslie-Jacobsen and Joseph S. Hopkins Published by Folklore Studies / Dept. of Philosophy, History, Culture and Art Studies University of Helsinki, Helsinki 1 RMN Newsletter is a medium of contact and communication for members of the Retrospective Methods Network (RMN). The RMN is an open network which can include anyone who wishes to share in its focus. It is united by an interest in the problems, approaches, strategies and limitations related to considering some aspect of culture in one period through evidence from another, later period. Such comparisons range from investigating historical relationships to the utility of analogical parallels, and from comparisons across centuries to developing working models for the more immediate traditions behind limited sources. RMN Newsletter sets out to provide a venue and emergent discourse space in which individual scholars can discuss and engage in vital cross- disciplinary dialogue, present reports and announcements of their own current activities, and where information about events, projects and institutions is made available. RMN Newsletter is edited by Frog, Helen F. Leslie-Jacobsen and Joseph S. Hopkins, published by Folklore Studies / Department of Philosophy, History, Culture and Art Studies University of Helsinki PO Box 59 (Unioninkatu 38 A) 00014 University of Helsinki Finland The open-access electronic edition of this publication is available on-line at: http://www.helsinki.fi/folkloristiikka/English/RMN/ The Ecology of Metre is a special thematic issue of the journal edited by Ilya Sverdlov and Frog. © 2016 RMN Newsletter; authors retain rights to reproduce their own works and to grant permissions for the reproductions of those works. ISSN 2324-0636 (print) ISSN 1799-4497 (electronic) All contributions to The Ecology of Metre have been subject to double-blind peer review by two external reviewers. 2 Contents Editor’s Note ............................................................................................................................................. 5 THE ECOLOGY OF METRE The Ecology of Metre: An Introduction .................................................................................................. 6 Frog and Ilya Sverdlov Description of Poetic Form as a Tool for Stylistic Analysis of a Traditional Song Performance: A Case of a Western Nenets Narrative Song ........................................................................................ 17 Jarkko Niemi The Metre of Yeats’s “Lake Isle of Innisfree” in Context ................................................................... 32 Michael Cade-Stewart Formulaic Language in Minimal Metrical Requirements: The Case of Post-Medieval Icelandic þulur......................................................................................................................................... 49 Yelena Sesselja Helgadóttir Linguistic Multiforms in Kalevalaic Epic: Toward a Typology .......................................................... 61 Frog Narratological, Metrical, and Syntactic Emphasis in the Old English Genesis A .............................. 99 Ilona Paulis REVIEW ARTICLES AND RESEARCH REPORTS Word Constellations as Tools in Skaldic Composition: Arnórr jarlaskáld and Óttarr svarti as a Case of Assimilation...................................................................................................................... 111 Cole Nyquist PROJECTS Personal Name Systems in Finnic and Beyond: Reconstructing the Concepts of Name Giving in Cultural Layers of Prehistory ........................................................................................................... 121 Terhi Ainiala CONFERENCES AND EVENTS Old Norse Mythology Conference 2015: “Myth, Materiality and Lived Religion” ......................... 124 Klas af Edholm “The Ontology of Supernatural Encounters”: The 4th Symposium of the Old Norse Folklorists Network .............................................................................................................................. 126 Tommy Kuusela Austmarr V: “No One Is an Island” ..................................................................................................... 129 Kendra Willson 3 PUBLICATIONS Edited Books New Focus on Retrospective Methods: Resuming Methodological Discussions: Case Studies from Northern Europe ........................................................................................................................... 133 Eldar Heide and Karen Bek-Pedersen The Viking Age in Åland: Insights into Identity and Remnants of Culture ...................................... 135 Joonas Ahola, Frog and Jenni Lucenius RMN Newsletter submissions ............................................................................................................... 140 4 Editor’s Note Since the founding of RMN Newsletter, oral the wide ranges of areas of potential interest poetry traditions and poetic texts as sources here. We hope that the concentrated attention have been addressed from different angles in given to metre and poetics in this special issue every issue of the journal. Fundamental to will stimulate attention to and discussion of poetry is, of course, metrics and the workings these topics, and the advance and refinement of language through which it manifests. of new approaches that are being developed. Formal aspects of poetics and how a poetic The articles collected in this volume system works are methodologically relevant present a number of new methods and to interpreting features of any particular methodological strategies as well as poetic source. Understanding the organizing theoretical perspectives that will be of interest principles and structures of a poetic system to a variety of scholars working with and its use in practice is a fundamental step retrospective methods. The Retrospective toward the distinction of meaningful features Methods Network (RMN) has also shown and variations. Without this perspective, a more general activity. The Austmarr Network researcher might easily project meanings and held its fifth annual meeting in Visby, interpretations on what, from the view of the Gotland (15th–16th October 2015), on the poet and his or her intended audience, might theme “No One Is an Island”, concentrating be nothing more than organic outcomes of on insular cultures in the Baltic Sea region. entextualization at the level of verbal texture The Old Norse Folklorists Network in its turn or an outcome of regular conventions held its fourth annual meeting in Tartu, independent of a poet’s intentions. The Estonia (10th–12th December 2015), this time Ecology of Metre has been organized as a taking a methodological emphasis on “The special issue in order to bring into focus the Ontology of Supernatural Encounters”. dynamics of such workings at the level of Reports on both events are to be found in the form. current issue. Plans are already in motion for Organizing a special issue on metrics and future events both organized by these poetics was proposed in 2014 by Ilya branches of the RMN and also independently Sverdlov, who advocated that this topic is as by the RMN’s members. significant as it is subtle. Sverdlov observed The positive attention to RMN Newsletter that although poetics may be addressed in itself and discussion of work published every issue of RMN Newsletter, it more often therein has also increased, for which we are than not remains in the shadows. thankful and appreciative, and do our best to Introductions to metrics seem earlier to have meet the interests and standards of our been more widely taught and even required in readership. We work to remain a venue for some institutions’ programs for folklore information and discussions that are carried studies and for some areas of philology. by many voices representing a variety of Although this seems to have waned from fields. That variety and the acuity, different areas of education, there is in fact a innovativeness and quality of work behind lively international discourse surrounding those voices is what gives life and richness to metrics and poetics. There also seems to be a this venue, and we look forward to the current rise in interest in the subtle interplays continued discussion by your voices into the of formal aspects of poetry with language in future. the communication of meanings and in the Frog structuring of images and motifs through the University of Helsinki conventions poetic representation. The Ecology of Metre only brushes the surface of 5 THE ECOLOGY OF METRE The Ecology of Metre: An Introduction Frog, University of Helsinki, and Ilya Sverdlov, Helsinki Metre is a living thing. It exists in and is system, lest their perspective become skewed. shaped by an environment that includes The present introduction reviews some of the language, genres and practices as well as oral central themes that form the cohesive web and/or written identity-bearing texts, and uniting this collection in order to make the these are reciprocally affected and shaped by dialogues between the diverse studies more metres with which they are connected and salient. When the complementary perspectives potentially also by those metres to which they comprising this volume are viewed together, stand in resonant, or perhaps contrastive the insights offered by each article is enriched relations. All
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