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:

    If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected—those, precisely, who need the laws’s protection most!—and listens to their testimony.
    James Baldwin (1924–1987)

    From the point of view of literature Mr. Kipling is a genius who drops his aspirates. From the point of view of life, he is a reporter who knows vulgarity better than any one has ever known it.
    Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)