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Pétur Knútsson: Published articles and
conference papers
This is a fairly full bibliography of
my academic papers. For a smaller hand-picked selection see
here.
Here is a link to my old University page of the same name. It will be taken
down in 2022, and I am gradually moving all my material to this site.
published articles
talks or conference
papers
2015
My Defence.
Talk on the occasion of the publication of Intimate Words / Innileiki orðanna,
Essays in honour of Pétur Knútsson, ed. Matthew Whelpton et al., 2015
(see
Windy Words 2012)
Where is the seat of language? Is it
in the brain? Does it have to be somewhere?
Líadan in
Laxdæla saga: an oral dialogic. Paper delivered at The
Trouble with Memory II. Irish-Icelandic Memory Studies. University
of Iceland, 13 March 2015. (see
Þeim var ek verst 2002)
The indexicality of textual
discourse. How do texts signal their relationships with other texts?
2014
Fjósamennskan. Tímariti Máls og menningar
3.hefti 2014: 114-117
Link to timarit.is
Kýrin Baula kennir fjósamanni
hvernig eiga eigi við harðstjóra og ofbeldismenn.
201
3
Skilningseplið, gönguprikið og hin blinda nútíð. Hugvísindaþing 16. mars.
(Glærur)
Þeir sáu það ekki. Hvað er
það sem við sjáum ekki?.
2012
Windy Words: towards a
pneumatic linguistics.
Milli mala. Ársrit Stofnunar Vigdísar Finnbogadóttur. 4.árg. 2012.
193-217.
Link to
Milli mála
The text is free of its author, and also of its reader. It follows its own
momentum. Quid verbumn nisi spiritus?
The Intimacy
of Bjólfkviða. Beowulf at Kalamzoo: Essays on Translation and
Performance. Eds. Jana K. Schulmann and Paul E. Szarmach. Kalamazoo: Medieval
Institute Publications, 2012. 186-206
Halldóra Björnsson's translation of Beowulf continually signals
its debt not only to the original Old English text but to other Old English poetic texts
of which Halldóra was not aware; and also to many
mediaeval Icelandic poetic texts which Halldóra knew very well. How does it do this?
(This article was written in 2008, essntially
originating from my 2004 talk of the same name at a
symposium in the Faculty of Humanities in Copenhagen following my dictoral
defence.)
2011
Looking forward to English: local vs global, classical vs koiné. The English
Speaking Union: English in and for Iceland. Nordic House, 10 June 2011.
On the dominance of International (second-language) English
Ordination and Sentence accent: a reappraisal. Hugvísindaþing/Humanities
Conference, 25 March
2011. Power Point presentation.
Deaccenting in English is a concommitant of hypotaxis. Icelandic prefers
parataxis, and does not use deaccenting. Is this a coincidence?
Að hlusta á fjöll: samskynjun sem lausn í túlkunarfræði (Synaesthesia as a
practical hermeneutic) Hugvísindaþing,/Humanities Confernce, University of
Iceland, 11 March 2011.
text
Power Point presentation
This presentation takes the next logical step from my essay 'Thumbing through
the index' (next item below).
Thumbing through the index. Milli mala. Ársrit Stofnunar Vigdísar
Finnbogadóttur. 2.árg. 2010. 201-214
Link to
Milli mála
The pointing finger (index) indicates things. The thunb (pollex)
pollicates things. Texts do both.
201
0
Lögheimili sannleikans: Ari fróði og sagnfræðin.
Ritið 3/2010, 73-93 pdf
Það er sannara
reynist? Hvernig skilur Ari sannleikshugtakið? Af hverju endurtaka
sannaðarmenn þrisvar?
Earlier English version here.
Heimild og lögform: sannleikshugtakið hjá Ara fróða.
Hugvísindaþing/Humanities conference, 6 mars 2010.
20088)
Ordination
and sentence accent: some English and Icelandic differences. 6 March 2010.
Earlier version of "Ordination and Sentence Accent: a reppraisal
(above, 2011).
2009
Pýþagoras, rísómið og rúnirnar.
Skírnir 183
árg., hausthefti., 2009. 335-354 pdf
Pythagoras = FUTHARK. Wulfilas must have noticed.
English version here (paper read in the
Icelandic Linguistic Society, 2007)
Heit rök og köld: tilfinningar og tautólógíur. Hugvísindaþing, 14. mars
2009
Tilfinningarök,
sjóndeildarhringur og fjöllin sjö. Tautið í lógíkinni.
200
8
The Citizenship of Truth: a Barfieldian reading of Ari
the Wise. This is the original English version of 'Lögheimili
sannleikans' (above), read at the 7th Partnership Conference
of the Universities of Manitoba and Iceland 29 August 2008, "Man, Culture and
Nature in Canada and Iceland".
Here is a dress-rehearsal video
of the paper.
Beowulf and the Icelandic Conquest of England.
Det norrøne og det nationale.
Stofnun Vigdísar Finnbogadóttur, 2008. 263-286..
"We are of one tongue with the English." What does the
First Grammarian mean by "tongue"?
Náin kynni – nýtt líf. Þýðingar milli
náskildra tunsgumála. Frændafundur
Fornenska, færeyska, íslenska - Christian Madras, Þorgeir Þorgeirson, Stefán
Einarsson, Halldóra Björnsson, Stefán Einarson; skáld og fræðimenn þýða,.
2007
Pythagoras in the Runes. Symposium on runes
and runology. Ísl. málfræðifélagið, 6 October 2007.
This is the original paper on Pythagoras in the Futhark, in English. See
Pýþagoras, rísómið og rúnirnar. Skírnir 2009, above.
Náin kynni –
nýtt líf. Þýðingar milli náskyldra tungumála. Paper read at Frændafundur 6,
held in Tórshavn, Faroes, 26-28 June 2007. Gefið út í Frændafundi
2008.
2006
Home, Home in the Dales: the dialogism of
topography in Laxdæla. The Cultural Reconstruction of Places ed.. Ástráður
Eysteinsson,, University of Iceland Press, 2006: 22-130.
When 'home' is mentioned in the Sagas - as it is, very often - what voice
is speaking?
The Pointing
Voice: How a Text Means. Hugvísindaþing 2005. Hugvísindastofnun
Háskóla Íslands, 2006: 223-233.
A summary of my doctoral thesis 2004. This essay prepares the ground for a number of concepts to be detailed in subsequent essays.
Josephine Pasternak and Owen Barfield:
watching the same rainbow. Paper read at the Hugvísindaþing (Conference of
the Humanities), Faculty of Humanities and Faculty of Theology, University
of Iceland, 4 November 2005
Kneading the Text: the Pointing Thumb.
Paper read at the Inaugural International Conference of the Danish Book
History Forum, ‘Ink on Light, Text on Screen: Text Matters’, The Graphics
Arts Institute of Denmark, 20-21 April 2005. Published 2011 as 'Thumbing
through the index'
Béowulf and the Icelandic Conquest of England.
Paper read at the Vigdísarþing, International Conference on The Nordic and
the National, University of Iceland, 17-18 March, 2006. Later published in
Det norrøne og det nationale. 2008: 263-286.)
2005
The Pointing Voice: How a Text Means. Talk
delivered at the Hugvísindaþing (Conference of the Humanities), Faculty of
Humanities and Faculty of Theology, University of Iceland, 18 November.
Published in the proceedings of the conference 2006.
Finger and Thumb: How to point in imaginary space.
Talk delivered at the Vigdís Finnbogadóttir Institute of Foreign Langages,
15. November.
I seem to have lost all information about this talk.
Home, Home in the Dales: the dialogism of topography in
Laxdæla. Talk given at the ACUME conference, ‘The Cultural
Reconstruction of Places,’ University of Iceland 24-25 June 2005. Published
in The Cultural Reconstruction of Places, 2006.
The
Naked and the Nude. Talk given at the Vigdís Finnbogadóttir Institute
for Foreign Languages, 1 March.2005.
'Intertextuality' is not a very helpful term. We'll use the term 'Index' instead. The index dwells on the very surface of the text.
2004
Intimations of the Third Text. An enquiry
into intimate translation and tertiary textuality. PhD dissertation. Det
Humanistiske Fakultet, Københavns Universitet, 2004
Files associated with this dissertation:
interim posting of
full text of
Bjólfskviða (Béowulf) in Halldóra B. Björnsson's
translation
the
Breca Episode in
Béowulf (Old English and Icelandic) with running analysis (Appendix
A of the dissertation)
the
Profiler
English as a Dead Language.
Topographies of
Globalization. Reykjavík: University of Iceland 2004
Corrective note by
John Cowan
Is English the new Latin?
The intimacy of Bjólfskviða. Paper read at the symposium on Texts &
Translations: Icelandic and others. Den Arnamagnæanske Samling, Nordisk
Forskningsinstitut, 12 November. Published under the same title
2012.
2002
Þeim var ek verst:
Líadan og Cuirithir í Laxdælu. Ritið. Timarit Hugvísindastofnunar Háskóla
Íslands, 2002: 153-162
Þegar Bolli spurði móður sína hvern hún elskaði mest,
svarar Guðrún með því að vitna í írskt dægurlag.
2000
On Textual Equality. Translator’s preface.
A Different Silence. Selected poems. Translated by Árni Íbsen and
Pétur Knútsson. London: Harwood Academic Publications, 2000
My preface to our translation of Árni's poetry.
Regretfully, the eye travels from left to right. This is the carrier signal,
the fundamental bias of the medium, the ever-present noise. It is the
thunder in the ear of the translator.
1995
Translation or Dialectal Adjustment? NOWELE
25,1995 107-126.
We do not think of the Old English copy of the Old
Saxon poem Genesis B as a translation. But what is Martin Næs's 1982
Faroese translation (1982) of the Icelander Snorri Hjartason's book of
poetry Hauströkkrið yfir mér (1979 ), if not a translation? Can we
meaningfully distinguish between a copy and a translation?
Intertextual quanta in formula and
translation. Language and Literature 4(2) , 1991:102-125
1993
Texti og
landslag. Skírnir, tímarit Hins íslenska bókmenntafélags, vor 1993: 66-76.
Ljóðið 'Hvarf'.S
Landslagseðli textans birtist í því, að það skiptir máli í hvaða ljósi hann
er lesinn, hvaða fletir hans eru upplýstir, hverjir í skugga ...
Allir textar finna sér samastað í Altextanum, og þiggja af honum
tilvist sína og sérstöðu.
Learned and Popular Etymology: Prescription
vs. Intertextual Paronomasia. Íslenskt mal 15(1993), 99-120.
Cratylus lives!
1992
Hugleiðing um (c).
Tímarit Máls og menningar, 53. árg. 3.h. 1992 42-43.
Fyrir utan ystu svigana tekur tómið við. Tómið sem
eyðileggst og fyllist af svigum um leið og husunin snertir það, og skreppur
því út undan allri hugun.
1984
Um þýðingu Halldóru B. Björnsson á
Bjólfskviðu. Skírnir, tímarit Hins íslenska bókmenntafélags 1984: 223-244.
This is my most detailed treatment of echoic structure in Halldóra's
translation of Beówulf, including material missing from my doctoral thesis
2004.
1983
Bjólfskviða. Halldóra B. Björnsson
íslenskaði. (Icelandic translation of Beouwulf by Halldóra B. Björnsson).
Fjölvaútgáfa. Edited by Pétur Knútsson Ridgeewell.
Here
is an interim posting of the text of Halldóra's
translation. See my doctoral thesis 2004.