Carolyne Larrington, prófessor emerita í evrópskum miðaldabókmenntum við Oxford-háskóla og emeritus rannsóknarfélagi við St. John's College í Oxford, heldur hátíðarfyrirlestur Hugvísindaþings 2024 í fyrirlestrasal Eddu föstudaginn 8. mars kl. 12:00-13:00. 

Sérsvið Carolyne er norrænar og evrópskar miðaldabókmenntir, sem og nútímaaðlaganir á miðaldaefni.

Carolyne nefnir erindi sitt Old Norse Myth in Anglophone Popular Culture: Óðinn, Þórr, Loki and His Children.

Um erindið

This lecture will examine the ways in which three principal figures of Old Norse myth have been made to signify in recent Anglo-American culture. Exploring the figures of Óðinn, Þórr and Loki (and his monstrous children) in novels, films, TV shows and operas, I will argue that these figures are indeed, as journalists like to say, ‘having a moment’ in the present-day popular imagination, in ways that differ considerably from their roles in previous nineteenth- and early twentieth-century works. The cultural functions they fulfil are closely related to their depictions in medieval sources – indeed, their ‘authenticity’ in relation to eddic material for example is a subject of lively debate in fan communities – but these characters are also fundamentally re-tooled and re-imagined in order to reflect on key contemporary concepts such as patriarchy, masculinity, queerness, adolescence and alterity in popular discourse.