Sexual Violence Against Women in Old Norse Literature

这项研究将是对古斯堪的纳维亚传奇文学中对女性的性暴力的首次全面探索。针对妇女的暴力行为通常被默契、模棱两可地呈现出来，否则就会“留在文本的无声空隙中”(菲尔普斯特德，2013)。我的研究解开了这些模棱两可的问题，展示了传奇中普遍存在的对女性的暴力问题，这样做加深了我们对文学中性别相互作用的理解。到目前为止，传奇中针对女性的性暴力要么被视为男性暴力阴谋的边缘(永奎斯特，2015)，要么仅仅被视为男性争斗的一个方面(福尔克，2021)；这种评估往往忽视了女性本身就是暴力的受害者。我将摒弃这些简单化的观点，在对针对妇女的性暴力事件进行分类的过程中，阐明它们的叙述目的、它们引起的情感反应以及与性暴力相关的具体语言模式。因此，我将通过将暴力和情感理论结合起来，对传奇叙事中性别动态的复杂性形成一种新的理解。通过严密的文学分析和多才多艺的方法，我的论文将对对妇女的暴力行为有一个全面的理解。

This study will be the first comprehensive exploration of sexual violence against women in Old Norse saga literature. Violence towards women is often presented tacitly, ambiguously, or else is 'left in the silent interstices of the text' (Phelpstead, 2013). My research untangles these ambiguities and demonstrates the pervasive and recurrent issue of violence towards women within the sagas, and in so doing furthers our understanding of gendered interplay in ON literature.Sexual violence against women in the sagas has hitherto been seen either as peripheral to the violent machinations of men (Ljungqvist, 2015) or merely as an aspect of male feuding (Falk, 2021); such assessments often disregard women as victims of violence in their own right. I will dismantle these reductive views and, in producing a typology of instances of sexual violence against women, elucidate their narrative purposes, the emotive reactions to which they give rise, and the specific linguistic patterns associated with sexual violence. I will thereby forge a novel understanding of the complexities of gender dynamics within saga narratives by combining theories of violence and emotion. Through close literary analysis and versatile methodologies, my thesis will create a comprehensive understanding of violence against women.