SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

Book Reviews 39 1
employs the puffy epithets of the blurb-writer in place of the
language of criticism. On a number of things, however, Professor
Jones writes illuminatingly (the comedy of Hr6lfs saga is a notable
instance), and always with honesty: he makes no claims for these
works as "literary structures" - though he notices that some
twentieth-century commentators have sought to invent structures
for them - and in so doing he does their authors a genuine
service.
Unless one re-reads the Introduction, which is both a statement
of intent and a list of necessary qualifications, one feels the lack of
a postscript; Kings Beasts and Heroes is crammed with so much,
in fact and by implication, that it demands some form of
summation, even if this were, as it might well have to be, an
admission that our information is too various and partial to allow
firm generalisation. In one chapter Professor Jones does deal
with broader aspects of his material: Culhwch ac Olwen provides
the warrant for an eclectic excursus on the Great Hunt, a chase
which encompasses Faulkner as well as Ovid. The illustrations in
Kings Beasts and Heroes represent not the times when the
individual works received their final impress but the heroic and
marvellous worlds which they partially recall; but they are handsome
and generous, like most things in this book.
BILL MANHIRE
N]ALS SAGA: A LITERARY MASTERPIECE. By EINAR 6L. SVEINS­
SON. Edited and translated by PAUL SCHACH with an
Introduction by E. O. G. TURVILLE-PETRE. University of
Nebraska Press, 1971. xvii-j-zro pp.
FIRE AND IRON: CRITICAL APPROACHES TO N]ALS SAGA. By
RICHARD F. ALLEN. University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971. xvi
+254 pp.
Although these two books on Nidls saga both appeared in 1971,
they represent very different periods of and fashions in literary
criticism. Einar 61. Sveinssori's A NjdlsbUo was first published
in 1943. It has received some modifications before being launched
with a new title in Dr Schach's translation, but its approach
remains representative of an earlier decade in as much as it is
mainly centred on character analysis. Out of eight chapters one
deals with "character portrayal" and three are devoted to
individuals. Professor Einar does not entirely avoid the dangers
of such an approach. The characters, lifted from their place in