Icelandic Literature - Middle Icelandic Literature

Middle Icelandic Literature

Important compositions of the time from the fifteenth century to the nineteenth include sacred verse, most famously the Passíusálmar of Hallgrímur Pétursson; rímur, rhymed epic poems with alliterative verse that consist of two to four verses per stanza, popular until the end of the nineteenth century; and autobiographical prose writings such as the Píslarsaga of Jón Magnússon. A full translation of the Bible was published in the sixteenth century. The most prominent poet of the eighteenth century was Eggert Ólafsson (1726–1768), while Jón Þorláksson frá Bægisá (1744–1819) undertook several major translations, including the Paradísarmissir, a translation of John Milton's Paradise Lost.

Read more about this topic:  Icelandic Literature

Famous quotes containing the words middle and/or literature:

    The goods of fortune ... were never intended to be talked out of the world.—But as virtue and true wisdom lie in the middle of extremes,—on one hand, not to neglect and despise riches, so as to forget ourselves,—and on the other, not to pursue and love them so, as to forget God;Mto have them sometimes in our heads,—but always something more important in our hearts.
    Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)

    Most literature on the culture of adolescence focuses on peer pressure as a negative force. Warnings about the “wrong crowd” read like tornado alerts in parent manuals. . . . It is a relative term that means different things in different places. In Fort Wayne, for example, the wrong crowd meant hanging out with liberal Democrats. In Connecticut, it meant kids who weren’t planning to get a Ph.D. from Yale.
    Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)