Roberta Frank. The Etiquette of Early Northern Verse

Abstract

This fabulous book of ‘Northern’ poetics developed out of the Robert Conway Lectures in Medieval Studies, delivered at the University of Notre Dame in 2010 and—according to the author—only awaiting retirement to be transformed into a monograph. It condenses the work of a lifetime: from Frank’s very first publication on ‘Some Uses of Paranomasia in Old English Verse’ (1972), to more recent work on ‘the Incomparable Wryness of Old English Poetry’ (2006) and ‘Conversational Skills for Heroes’ (2014)—with all her research on Old Norse Court Poetry in between. In many ways, it positions itself as a handbook of poetics, an extension of Snorri Sturluson’s Edda—that invaluable guide to Old Norse poetry which is so envied by scholars of Old English: ‘Snorri Sturluson outlined several subcategories of extra rhymes, but not even he could net them all’ (40). The way Frank collects, lists, and succinctly analyses samples of poetry to illustrate wordplay, rhyme, and alliteration—adding anecdotes and witticisms along the way—both looks and feels very like a contemporary version of Snorri’s treatise Skáldskaparmál (‘On Poetic Diction’).