Suchergebnisse

Ævintýrið "La Belle et la Bête" eða "Fríða og dýrið", eftir Madame de Villeneuve kom út í París árið 1740. Sagan var stytt og endursögð af Madame Leprince de Beaumont en hún gaf söguna út í London árið 1756 í Magasin des enfants, fræðslu og skemmtiriti sem ætlað var enskum nemendum hennar. Í þeirri gerð varð ævintýrið þekkt víða um lönd enda var bók Beaumonts lengi notuð við frönskukennslu. Þessi fræga saga er eitt þeirra fáu frönsku bókmenntaverka sem þýdd voru á íslensku á 18. öld. Hannes Finnsson, biskup í Skálholti, þýddi söguna og birti, undir heitinu "Skrýmslið góða", í verki sínu Kvöldvökurnar 1794. Í inngangsorðum sínum að Kvöldvökunum fjallar Hannes um þýðingarstarfið og áherslur sínar sem þýðandi. Í þessari grein er rýnt í þýðingu Hannesar á þessu fræga ævintýri sem naut mikilla vinsælda hérlendis á 19. öld og þýðingin birt óstytt.

The astonishing range of writings about the social causes and consequences of the Icelandic 2008 financial crisis proffers a unique opportunity to analyse comparative-ly how scholars from different disciplines in the humanities and social sciences deal with one and the same subject. How does the scholarly approach differ regarding the employment of theories, hypotheses, empirical data and concepts? Is the methodology of the humanities noticeably different from that of the social sciences? Did the boundaries of philosophy and related sciences change in times of crisis, momentarily or permanently?

The article initially addresses the novel Kata by Steinar Bragi in the context of genre and asks to what extent it aligns itself with the crime novel, in particular the more recent brand of the crime novel wherein social issues are placed at the forefront. The point is made that Kata diverges in some important respects from even the most radical of critiques found within the parameters of the crime genre, in that it suspends the very concepts that usually ground such narratives (justice, right, and crime) and comes to the conclusion that the widespread social acceptance of violence against women delegitimizes the entire edifice of Western thinking on social justice. It is here that the article looks towards Louis Althusser's theorization 149of ideological and oppressive state apparatuses, while shifting their object from the class struggle to gender relations. Althusser's concepts are employed to shed light on the ideology that supports and enables violence against women in contemporary societies, and how the reverse of the oppressive function of the state, that is, state leniency and disinterest in prosecuting sex crimes, or creating the environment in which they are unlikely to be reported, are taken up in the novel, thematized, and in turn, fuel the rage of the protagonist. Finally, a question is raised as to the signific-ance of the fact that a novel about female rage and disempowerment is written by a male author.

Moonstone: The Boy Who Never Was (Mánasteinn: Drengurinn sem aldrei var til, 2013) by Sjón tells of three eventful months in the life of Máni Steinn in the fall of 1918. In this short period the volcano Katla erupts, the Spanish flu rages and Iceland regains its sovereignty from Denmark. Building on Judith Butler's, Mary Douglas's and Michel Foucault's theories regarding the body as a cultural construct, this article focuses on body discourse as presented in Moonstone. According to Douglas there is a direct link between boundaries of the body and boundaries of society. Everything that endangers the stability of society's boundaries is considered social pollution. Foucault's theory on panopticism likewise identifies surveillance and discipline of citizens' bodies as means of maintaining society's social structure. Because Máni Steinn is queer, his body is considered abnormal according to the period's definitions on what constitutes a healthy and stable body. Aberrations from the "healthy", heterosexual body creates divergence within society's fabric. To regain the appearance of a "pure" society Máni needs to be hidden or banished from it. Yet the arrival of the Spanish flu to Reykjavík deconstructs conventional definition of the body and unravels the social hierarchy. The distinction between the healthy and the infected is obliterated, as the body becomes a site where irreconcilable opposites merge. During the turmoil of the Spanish flu boundaries of the body become as unstable as society's boundaries become fluent.

Julia Kristeva er einn af helstu hugsuðum póststrúktúralisma og afbyggingar og er þekkt fyrir skrif sín á sviði sálgreiningar, málvísinda og bókmennta. Hún fæddist árið 1941 í Búlgaríu og lagði stund á málvísindi við Háskólann í Sofiu áður en flutti sig um set til Parísar árið 1966. Þar fór hún í doktorsnám í bókmenntum og málvísindum sem hún lauk með ritgerð um 15. aldar rithöfundinn Antoine de La Salle og skáldsögu hans, Le Petit Jehan de Saintré. Í París kynntist hún fljótt fjölmörgum fræðimönnum á borð við Michel Foucault, Émile Benveniste, Lucien Goldmann, Roland Barthes, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Jacques Derrida, Philippe Sollers o.fl. og tók þátt í ritstjórn tímaritsins Tel Quel sem upphaflega var ætlað að fjalla um nýja og róttæka strauma í bókmenntum og menningu en lét sig einnig varða stjórnmál, ekki síst maóisma, um nokkurt skeið.

Að námi loknu fékk hún stöðu við Diderot-háskólann í París (Paris VII) en eftir að hafa gengist undir sálgreiningu á árunum 1974-1979 hjá André Green fór hún sjálf einnig að starfa sem sálgreinandi. Í æðri doktorsritgerð sinni, La Révolution du langage poétique (Bylting í tungumáli skáldskaparins, 1974) beitti Kristeva kenningum sálgreiningarinnar á tungumál og bókmenntir. Þar fjallar hún um tvö svið tungumálsins: hið táknræna svið og hið semíótíska svið sem mynda andstöðu hvort við annað. Sjálfsveran verður til í tungumálinu en þar eiga sér stað átök sviðanna tveggja. Semíótíska sviðið tengist líkama sjálfsverunnar, hvötunum og móðurinni; það verður til á undan tungumálinu en er því til grundvallar. Táknræna sviðið er hins vegar svið tungumálsins, málfræði, setningaskipanar og samfélagsins. Forsenda þess er bæling hins sviðsins sem liggur dýpra en gerir þó vart við sig á ýmsan hátt, t.d. í listrænni sköpun eða meðferð tungumálsins, mismæli, þögnum og stílbrögðum.[1]

Julia Kristeva hefur þróað og sett fram hugmyndir sínar og kenningar í fjölmörgum ritum og útgefin verk hennar – fræðirit, skáldsögur, greinar og greinasöfn – skipta tugum. Greinin sem hér er þýdd, "Unglingsskáldsagan" eða "Le roman adolescent" kom fyrst út í tímaritinu Adolescence árið 1986 en var svo endurútgefin árið 1993 í greinasafninu Les nouvelles maladies de l'âme. Hér fléttar Kristeva saman umfjöllun um bókmenntir og sálgreiningu og skoðar tengslin milli skáldsagnaritunar og unglingsáranna. Unglingurinn í hennar skrifum vísar ekki til ákveðins aldurskeiðs heldur til þess sem hún kallar opna sálræna gerð eða structure psychique ouverte. Unglingsgerðin opnar sig fyrir hinu bælda og í greininni bendir Kristeva á tengsl hennar við skáldsagnaskrif og tvíræðni með því að taka dæmi úr ýmsum skáldsögum, m.a. viðfangsefni fyrri doktorsritgerðar sinnar en einnig verkum eftir þekktari höfunda, s.s. Rousseau og Dostojevskí.

[1] Ítarlegri kynningu á Juliu Kristevu má finna í inngangi Dagnýjar Kristjánsdóttur "Ástin og listin gegn þunglyndinu" í íslenskri þýðingu ritsins Soleil noir : Dépression et mélancolie (París: Éditions Gallimard, 1987). Svört sól: Geðdeyfð og þunglyndi, Ólöf Pétursdóttir þýddi, Reykjavík: Háskólaútgáfan, Bókmenntafræðistofnun Háskóla Íslands, 2008, bls. 13–45. Einnig má benda á þýðingu Garðars Baldvinssonar á "Le mot, le dialogue et le roman" (Σηµειωτικη. [Semeiotike] Recherches pour une sémanalyse, París: Éditions Seuil, 1969) sem birtist undir heitinu "Orð, tvíröddun og skáldsaga" í Spor í bókmenntafræði 20. aldar: frá Shklovskíj til Foucault, ritstjórn: Garðar Baldvinsson, Kristín Birgisdóttir, Kristín Viðarsdóttir, Reykjavík: Bókmenntafræðistofnun, 1991, bls. 93–128.

This article discusses the phenomenon of self-harming or "non-Suicidal Self-In-jury" (nSSI). The International Society for the Study of Self-Injury defines non-sui cidal self-injury as the deliberate, self-inflicted damage of body tissue without suicidal intent and for purposes not socially or culturally sanctioned." The article discusses the cultural and social representations of self-injury, what is implied in it, who engages in it, and for what reasons. A lot can be deduced from interviews with self-harmers who use it to gain control over bad feelings and stress, by hurting their body and participating in risky behaviour. This dangerous activity often has more complicated sides with reference to rituals and spiritual associations to bloodletting, cleansing of all evil and healing, absolution and much wanted peace of mind. Finally, the changes in self-harming discourse and channels of communication are discussed. It has opened up during the last two decades with the arrival of social media. The self-harmers have built their own subcultures with special aesthetics and often preferring theatrical staging or performances instead of verbal expres-sion. These channels can have an uncanny power and influence over young and vulnerable people. The conclusion of the article is that all this requires an informed discussion as a special world, a special angst which is expressing itself in ways that might develop into suicidal behaviour if it is not taken seriously.

A haunted house can either be a monster or the habitat of monsters, or even both. These houses have a unique attraction and a variety of methods to catch their prey. The scariest haunted house in the film Rökkur by Erlingur Óttar Thoroddsen (2017) does not provide shelter from wind and weather as it is not made of wood, concrete or stone. The ghosts in Rökkur are lurking online instead. By using the premises of the horror genre, Erlingur focuses specifically on the dangers that young homosexual men can be facing today. Chat rooms and social media are like hunting grounds for the monsters stalking the main characters. The film also focuses on the staggering silence of survivors of sexual violence, as studies have indicated that male victims are less likely to report the crimes they have suffered.

Explanations of sexual violence are an important topic because they reveal the societal context of violence. Perpetrators of violence commonly reject blame, explaining their actions with survivor behavior or the situation. In this study, 397 Icelandic social media posts from Facebook and Twitter were analyzed for explanations of violence. Societal explanations included general negative attitudes towards women, biological essentialism (that men cannot control their sex drive), the entitlement of men to sex and objectification. Survivor explanations included that the survivor had been drinking alcohol at the time of the violence, and that the survivor was expected to fight back to justify the event being classified as violence. The monster stereotype of perpetrators was salient in the accounts, either as fact, or to specifically challenge that idea. The results reveal powerful societal stereotypes when it comes to sexual violence, which need to be counteracted in the future.

Greinin reynir að svara spurningunni hvers vegna svo margar íslenskar skáldsögur áratugarins 2010–2019 hafi fjallað um náttúruhamfarir og í flestum tilvikum eldgos. Í innganginum er bent á hliðstæðar greiningar á sögulegu samhengi bandarískra stórslysakvikmynda. Sú skýringartilgáta er lögð fram að há tíðni náttúruhamfara í skáldskap áratugarins tengist menningarlegu uppgjöri við Hrunið og tengda atburði. Því er haldið fram að tengsl skáldsagnanna við þessar sögulegu aðstæður skýrist séu þær lesnar sem hluti af því sem skoski mannfræðingurinn Victor Turner kallaði samfélagssjónleiki (e. social drama). Næstu kaflar greinarinnar innihalda rökstuðning fyrir kenningunni um tengsl Hrunsins og náttúruhamfara í skáldskap. Helstu rökin eru fengin með nákvæmum lestri tíu skáldsagna sem eru mátaðar við kenningu Turners um þróun samfélagssjónleikja. Í ljós kemur að þær passa vel inn í þetta greiningarmódel að því er virðist með þeirri niðurstöðu að samfélagssjónleikurinn hafi leitt til klofnings í ýmsum skilningi. Í lokaorðunum er þeirri hugmynd varpað fram að á þriðja áratugnum muni skáldskapur sem tengist úrvinnslu kórónuveirufaraldursins velta eldgosum úr sessi sem algengustu náttúruhamfarirnar í íslenskum skáldsögum.

This article surveys the ouevre of the Icelandic writer Jakobína Sigurðardóttir (1918-1994) on the occasion of her centenary. Various aspects of her novels, short stories, poetry and memoirs are examined, including the ways in which she presents time in her texts – time as it pertains to individual life spans and the interaction of different generations, as well as time in the life of a nation which could be said to have switched abodes in the course of the 20th Century, moving from rural to urban settings, and during this time the island nation attained sovereignty and independence. narrative is a key element in treating time and historical shifts, and attention is paid to the ways in which Sigurðardóttir both renews realist traditions and resorts to more radical narrative forms, pulling the reader into an active dialogue on gender and generational issues, on social justice and equality, as well on the routes and conditions which connect and mould places of dwelling – individual houses as well as the abode of the nation.

The regulation of film exhibition in Iceland has closely shadowed the history of cinema exhibition itself. Although regulation practices have undergone various shifts and realignments throughout the twentieth century, they retained certain core concerns and a basic ideological imperative having to do with child protection and child welfare. Movies were thought to have a disproportionate impact on children, with "impressionable minds" often being invoked. Their interior lives and successful journey towards maturity were put at risk each and every time they encountered unsuitable filmic materials. Thus, while assuming that adults could fend for them-selves among the limited number of theaters in Reykjavík, children were a whole another matter and required protection. Civic bodies were consequently formed and empowered to evaluate and regulate films. But even in the context of fairly rigorous surveillance and codification, the turn taken by regulatory authorities in the 1980s strikes one as exceptional and unprecedented. The Film Certification Board (TFCB) was, for the first time, authorized to prohibit and suppress from distribution films deemed especially malignant and harmful. Motivating this vast expansion of the powers of the regulatory body were concerns about a variety of exploitation and horror films that were being distributed on video, films that were thought to transgress so erroneously in terms of on-screen violence that their mere existence posed a grave threat to children. Two years after finding its role so radical-ly enlarged, TFCB put together a list of 67 "video-nasties", to borrow a term from the very similar but later moral panic that occurred in Britain. Police raids were conducted and every video store in the country was visited in a nation-wide effort to remove the now illegal films from rental stores. This article posits that the icelandic nasties list can be viewed as something of a unique testament to the extent to which the meaning, aesthetic coherence and the affect of cultural objects is constructed in the process of reception, while also main-taining that the process of reception is thoroughly shaped by historical discourses, social class, embedded moral codes and a social system of values, as well as techno-logical progress. in what amounts to a perfect storm of moralizing, political games-manship and the sheer panic of a certain segment of the population, the governing institutions in iceland managed in the span of months to overturn constitutionally protected rights to free speech and privacy, as well as undermine central principles of the republic. Two decades would pass before these setbacks were recuperated, and then only on a legal and institutional level. While analyzing the history of the icelandic video nasties, the article also attempts to grapple with and articulate the symbolic register of the ban, how it speaks to the status of cinema in Iceland at the close of the twentieth century, and what ideological strains, morals and/or values were being put into play and funneled into this particular debate. Then, to close, the role of the most notorious of the nasties, Cannibal Holocaust (Ruggero Deodato, 1980), is examined in the context of media coverage and parliamentary debates at the time.

Alda Björk Valdimarsdóttir's book of poetry, We Who Are Blind and Nameless, was published in 2015. The first part of the book, titled "The course of signs", lays the groundwork for the conceptual basis of the work through five poems. These five
poems will be examined through close reading and scholarly materials from various sources, such as cognitive literary studies, philosophy, psychology, social studies and neurological research. There is particular focus on how the poems stimulate the imagination of readers and ruffle their feelings; there is a discussion on (conceptual) metaphors, irony, humor, paradox, geometrical shapes, enumeration, anaphora and, not least, silence which is a common theme in Alda's poetry and also defines the structure of her poems in various ways. This analysis shows how Alda convinces readers to think about the "course of signs" in both a narrow and wider context. She not only causes readers to think about the paradoxical interplay of silence and signs – and thus man's ingrained need to both speak and be silent – but also woman's position within her family/world history and the encroachment of man upon his own environment. Through clever humour and irony, Alda Björk shows how apathetic people often are when faced with signs; how without thinking they give themselves over to them, even though they have other options; how people contribute for the signs to be isolating instead of connecting us with each other – and how they misuse silence or are not able to make use of it.

Icelandic politics are analysed from the perspectives of three normative models of democracy: the liberal, republican and deliberative democratic theories. While the Icelandic constitution is rooted in classical liberal ideas, Icelandic politics can be harshly criticized from a liberal perspective, primarily because of the unclear separation of powers of government and for the extensive involvement of politics in other social sectors. Despite strong nationalist discourse which reflects republican characteristics, rooted in the struggle for independence from Denmark, republicanism has been marginal in Icelandic politics. In the years before the financial collapse, Icelandic society underwent a process of liberalization in which power shifted to the financial sector without disentangling the close ties that had prevailed between business and politics. The special commission set up by the Icelandic Parliament to investigate the causes of the financial collapse criticized Icelandic politics and governance for its flawed working practices and lack of professionalism. The appropriate lessons to draw from this criticism are to strengthen democratic practices and institutions. In the spirit of republicanism, however, the dominant discourse about Icelandic democracy after the financial collapse has been on increasing direct, vote-centric participation in opposition to the system of formal politics. While this development is understandable in light of the loss of trust in political institutions in the wake of the financial collapse, it has not contributed to trustworthy practices. In order to improve Icelandic politics, the analysis in this paper shows, it is important to work more in the spirit of deliberative democratic theory ; Peer Reviewed

This article is written on the occasion of the 500 years anniversary of the Lutheran reformation (siðbót) which started in 1517. The aim is to point out new perspectives worth considering in research on the main implications of the reformation in the political field (siðaskipti) and cultural and / or social field (siðbreyting). In this regard, it is pointed out that in researches of such a complex historical process is inevitable to assume pre-defined pardigms that can serve as prerequisites for the interpretation of the subject. It is also pointed out that, up to present time, a single one-sided paradigm which describes the reformation as a revolution has been assumed in Icelandic studies of the reformation which assumes that the transition from a catholic to a lutheran church in Iceland has been sudden and for more or less political reasons, ie. for the efforts of Christian the III:rd of Denmark to increase his assets, properties and power in the country. The article argues that the relationships between religion and politics was much more complexed at this time than has generally been expected, as well as that Christina the III:rd and his representatives in Iceland considered it as their duties as christians to promote the reformation in the country and in that way respond to the demand of Luther to the christian nobility to rescue the Church on the basis of the gospel. In the article it is assumed that the reformation in Iceland happened in the period 1539-1600 and the development took place on various religious, ecclesial, political and cultural fields. In that way it is meaningful to describe it as a viscous reformation.