Genre classification of Icelandic sagas and M.M. Bakhtin’s “Chronotope”

Abstract

The paper focuses on the issue of genre classification of the Old Icelandic saga. The saga is a unique genre of literature and is divided into several subgenres which various scholars define differently. Typically, scholarship employs traditional schemes based on thematic and chronological principles; it differentiates between the “kings’ sagas” dedicated to the history of Norway from ancient times until the end of the 13^th century; “family sagas” that recount the history of Icelandic families from the settlement of Iceland in the late 9^th century; “sagas of ancient times” which narrate events in Scandinavia up to the end of the 9^th century; “bishops’ sagas,” meaning biographies of Icelandic bishops; a collection of sagas detailing events in Iceland during the 12^th and 13^th centuries known as the “Sturlunga saga”; along with “chivalric sagas,” which are prose retellings of chivalric romances and similar indigenous Scandinavian sagas; biographies of saints; and translations of historical and pseudo-historical literature. Simultaneously, there exists a categorisation of sagas into the “sagas of modern times,” “sagas of the past,” and “sagas of antiquity.” Since the end of the last century, saga scholars have actively employed M.M. Bakhtin’s theory of the “chronotope” – the unity of temporal and spatial relations reflected in literature – to discuss the genre characteristics of the sagas. Using the example of the “sagas of ancient times”, and in particular “Yngvars saga viðfǫrla”, the author demonstrates that the “chronotope” as such is an insufficient basis for creating a functioning classification of saga sub-genres. The author argues that sagas are inherently complex in their internal organisation since their defining characteristic is “hybridity”, which emerges from individual sagas’ combining the distinctive features of subgenres traditionally classified in preceding scholarship.