What genres do the following texts belong to?
I think the Voluspa
text is of the Fantasy genre. There’s talk of God’s, Giants, and creation, so
to speak. “Hear my words, you holy gods”. “I remember giants of ages past,
those who called me one of their kin”. “Then bur’s sons lifted up the land and
made Midgard, men’s fair dwelling” so they (sons) lifted up the land and
created earth (referring to the diagram shown in class last week) suggesting
that they had some sort of ‘power’ so to speak to create earth/world. This
creation later became the dwelling place for humans who were created from trees
(an example of this is in the 7th and 8th paragraph of
the text) - “Ash and Embla...these did not breath, nor think nor speak, they
had no hair, nor fairness of face; Odin gave life’s breath, Hoenir gave mind,
Lodur gave hair, fairness of face”. Another example is when the ‘three maidens’
are mentioned – “Much wisdom have the three maidens who come from the waters
close to that tree; they establish laws, decided the lives men were to lead,
marked out their fates” suggesting that although humans were created by Gods,
they didn't however, have the power over their lives, the three maidens did insomuch that they had power to decide the course humans would take and even mark out their fate! Terry (1990, 1996)
What are some possible features or residual (“secondary”) orality
preserved in Voluspa, according to the criteria Ong advances?
Ong’s text describes the development of literacy through the
ages from ‘oral, writing, print to electronic culture’. He also says that
analysing the difference between orality and literacy could only be done in the
electronic age (secondary orality) because it depends so much on “writing and
print for its existence”. Ong (1982).
Hey Samantha,
ReplyDeleteI like your first answer, it was thorough and clearly well researched. To be honest when I first read that question I thought it was a bit easy, but the more you look at it, the trickier it becomes. I guess what I mean is, we can assign Voluspa to a genre like Fantasy here in 2013, but what would it have been considered in it's time? An Epic Poem? Is that really a genre, or is it a medium? I guess it depends. Sorry, I'm getting carried away. Good answer!
Hey Sam, This is a good post. It looks like you did good research on the topic. I think that Voluspa would come under to the Mythological poems. Very well put together post though.
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