Oxford Keynote Speaker: Professor Terry Gunnell (University of Iceland)
Old Norse Poetry in Performance will be an interdisciplinary conference seeking to provide a framework within which both emerging and established literary scholars, actors and dramaturgs can explore the various problems and potentialities surrounding the performance of Old Norse-Icelandic poetry.
In 1920 Dame Bertha Phillpotts published The Elder Edda and Ancient Scandinavian Drama, the first systematic argument that a substantial part of the eddic verse corpus had originally been designed for multi-participant dramatic performance. Although early reviewers were sceptical, interest in her thesis has steadily grown, and the new discipline of performance studies has increasingly been applied also to the skaldic corpus. Nearly a century on, it is appropriate to review recent progress in this debate.
The conference will be aimed at exploring the dramatic potential in the Old Norse-Icelandic poetic corpus. The intention is to provide a body of experimental stage work upon which further research could draw, as well as to contextualise the critical work currently being done in this field by setting it alongside the practical experimental work of theatrical practitioners. The conference will operate as a focus for dramaturgs and academics to experience one another's approach to a notoriously resistant and fragmentary literature, both in order to aid the construction of a historical understanding of Old Norse poems as performance texts and to establish a practical research platform that is at once experimental and scholarly.
Registration for this event is now open and can be found here: http://www.oxforduniversitystores.co.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=2&deptid=257&catid=94&prodid=524&searchresults=1
Please visit, http://oldnorsepoetryinperformance.com/programme, to view and download our conference programme or feel free to contact Annemari Ferreira and Brian McMahon at oldnorsepoetryinperformance@gmail.com for more information. Website: http://oldnorsepoetryinperformance.com/
Facebook Groups Page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/oldnorsepoetryinperformance/
Humanities & Performance
Website: Old Norse Poetry in Performance
Audience: Open to all
