Pétur Knútsson: selection

Pétur Knútsson: selection

This is a selection of academic articles and papers arranged by topic. For a full bibliography see here.
All these articles can be downloaded, usually as pdf-files.

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textuality and translation
textuality and language
textuality and being
textuality and orality
the way we speak
the future of English
að eiga við harðstjóra

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?

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.

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

Bjólfskviða. Halldóra B. Björnsson íslenskaði. (Icelandic translation of Beouwulf by Halldóra B. Björnsson). Edited by Pétur Knútsson Ridgewell. Fjölvaútgáfa.
            Here is an interim posting of the text of Halldóra's translation. See my doctoral thesis 2004.

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.

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?

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.

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 above).

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?

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.

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

Learned and Popular Etymology: Prescription vs. Intertextual Paronomasia. Íslenskt mal 15(1993), 99-120.
            Cratylus lives!

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.

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.

Lögheimili sannleikans: Ari fróði og sagnfræðin. Ritið 3/2010, 73-93 (pdf). Icelandic version of next item.
Hvernig skilur Ari sannleikshugtakið ("það er sannara reynist") ? Af hverju endurtaka sannaðarmenn þrisvar?

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 Joint 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.

Pýþagoras, rísómið og rúnirnar. Skírnir 183 árg., hausthefti., 2009: 335-354 pdf
    Pythagoras = FUTHARK. Wulfilas must have noticed.
    English version below

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.

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"?

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?

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.
English below

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.
The indexicality of textual discourse. How do texts signal their relationships with other texts?

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?

English as a Dead Language. Topographies of Globalization. Reykjavík: University of Iceland 2004
Is English the new Latin?
Corrective note by John Cowan

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

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.