William Morris and the Icelandic Sagas, by Ian Felce

Abstract

Reviewed by: William Morris and the Icelandic Sagas by Ian Felce Michelle Weinroth (bio) William Morris and the Icelandic Sagas, by Ian Felce; pp. viii + 195. Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 2018, £60.00, £19.99 ebook, $99.99, $24.99 ebook. One of the striking features of William Morris and the Icelandic Sagas is its author's command of Old Norse. In what is ostensibly a close study of William Morris's engagement with Icelandic medievalism, Ian Felce displays considerable literary and philological expertise. His scrutiny of Morris's rearticulation of Old Norse sagas is meticulous, as is his defense of Morris's translation style, otherwise largely repudiated by nineteenth- and early twentieth-century critics. While others have studied Morris's use of Icelandic material, particularly his literary adaptations, translations, and translation methodology, Felce has produced the most sustained book-length treatment of the subject to date. Victorianists versed in Icelandic literature and Old Norse will certainly appreciate Felce's work. Other readers, less familiar with these fields, will admire the author's linguistic prowess; but their appetite for a more elaborate discussion of the book's underlying theme—the genesis and evolution of Morris's code of heroism in the context of his Icelandic writings—may not be wholly sated. Such readers may wonder why Felce stops short of linking Morris's literary adaptations of Old Norse tales with the history of Morris's political agency. Although that connection is already latent in Felce's analysis, it is never made fully manifest. Indeed, William Morris and the Icelandic Sagas contains the spectral presence of a moral and faintly political biography, sinuously weaving through a linguistic examination of Morris's Icelandic oeuvre. Distinct from E. P. Thompson's William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary (1955), Felce's covertly (perhaps unconsciously) biographical work does not delineate a sequence of historical incidents; yet its chronologically structured discussion of Morrisian ethics (as seen in his renderings of Icelandic sagas) follows a pattern that might be read as the narrative arc of Morris's evolving values and vocations—from his disenchantment with Pre-Raphaelite romanticism to his gradual move into political praxis. Chapter 1, "'The Lovers of Gudrun' and the Crisis of the Grail Quest," marks the starting point of this trajectory. Here Felce offers a nuanced discussion of the ideological shift in Morris's early romances, a turn from the idealism of Arthurian grail quests to the gritty realism of his Icelandic writings. Disenchanted with Thomas Carlyle-style heroism and its reliance on spiritual salvation, Morris finds a new ideological home in the Icelandic sagas. With their emphasis on self-reliant human agency, the Norse tales spur him on to develop an alternative ethic of stoic heroism through the translation and recreation of Old Norse texts. His close collaboration with friend and linguist Eiríkur Magnússon facilitates this immersive labor of love. Never a slavish imitator of his source material, Morris reconfigures these Icelandic tales to suit his own aesthetic and ideological ends. Felce's second chapter, "The Sagas of Icelanders and the Transmutation of Shame," explicates this transformative process, tracking Morris's conscious modification of original Norse narratives, specifically his methodical excision of references to obscene rituals of humiliating barbarity. Readers interested in the broader implications of Felce's compelling analysis might ask: Did Morris's cleansing of Norse shaming align with, or prefigure, the politics of his early advocacy work? Were his morally governed versions of Icelandic sagas the incipient moment of a political desire to help abolish human debasement (that is, to rescue the downtrodden English and colonized laborer from physical and moral degradation)? Did Morris's [End Page 610] Icelandic writings constitute the literary groundwork of his future activism? Felce's largely text-bound hermeneutical approach does not pursue these lines of thought. But the further readers advance in Felce's book, the more these musings are likely to arise, as each of Morris's saga renditions (as Felce presents them) reveals an unmistakably Morrisian signature. Did Morris find in these tales a vocabulary with which to invent his self-assigned code of heroic (read: socialist) agency? His portrayal of Grettir the Strong, a character whose dire moments of...