Would love to hear any thoughts on the codification of the poet-persona over time? 👀
Ok so in the spirit of the ask game, I am not checking any citations on this whatsoever, but if you want those lmk (though they uh. largely do not exist for rímur-poets specifically, because only me and Hans Kuhn have ever cared).
This is going to require some context because, as established, the number of living people who know and care about medieval rímur can be counted on my two hands. Probably without thumbs. So, rímur are a poetic form that developed in 14th cen Iceland, which look kind of ballad-y, in that they often use four-line stanzas with ABAB end-rhyme, though actually the ballad tradition in Iceland is quite distinct (on which, see Vésteinn Ólason, The Ballads of Iceland). End-rhyme was very exciting for Icelandic poets because it was only previously a thing in some uncommon types of skaldic metres, but rímur (as their name suggests) have end-rhyme as a defining feature and rapidly become The dominant form of poetry in Iceland until well into the 19th cen.
There are two very distinctive things about rímur, other than their metres: 1) they almost never tell 'new' stories; almost all rímur narratives are attested earlier in other forms, usually in prose, which can sometimes lead to the fun cycle of saga -> rímur cycle -> old saga is lost, new version is written based on the rímur -> more rímur are written based on the new saga -> repeat until the heat death of the universe; 2) as the form develops, it acquires introductory stanzas known as mansöngvar, a term which elsewhere usually means 'love poetry', although that's not really what they're doing here.
Mansöngvar are verses, sometimes in a different metre to the rest of the canto they're attached to, in which the poet speaks directly to the audience. In the medieval period, they're pretty short and often don't say more than 'look, I made you some poetry', but as time goes on, they get more and more elaborate, and the character of the poet begins to develop some quite distinctive traits. What's interesting here is that rímur were (certainly in the medieval period; less certainly later on) performed aloud, presumably by the poet, so there's definitely some questions to be asked about how accurate the poets' self-descriptions are when presumably the audience could go 'you're not pining away for love, Jón Jónsson, I've met your wife!'
So anyway, these mansöngvar are often linked to the medieval German Minnesänger tradition (er. The actual German word might be slightly different because I still don't speak German despite my PhD supervisor's pointed remarks), which is more overtly love poetry and which sometimes features the poet as an abject and despised lover of some cruel lady. This is something rímur-poets from the later medieval period and onwards have an incredibly good time with. You may be familiar with the story of Þórr wrestling with Elli, the personification of old age in the form of an old woman. There are at least two medieval rímur poets who have a whole extended passage about 'oh alas, when I was young I was a terrible flirt but now I'm old and no women like me, except oh no, I am being courted by this ugly old giant lady; Elli is the only ladyfriend for me now, wah'. it's very playful, it's very fun, it's drawing on this general sense that the poets put forward that they're poetically gifted, but romantically unlucky, which is kind of a Thing for poets across a lot of European literature (and probably more broadly, but I don't know much about that), and is especially pronounced in the earlier Icelandic sagas about poets, which usually feature poets failing to win the love of their life for various reasons (sudden attack of Christianity; sudden attack of magic seals; sudden attack of Other Guy With Sword; etc). So in evoking this, rímur-poets are situating themselves in this existing Image of the Ideal Poet, but doing so in a way that ties them into the specifics of the Norse literary/mythological tradition as well. Poets are also frequently old and tired (same, bro), and a statistically improbably number of them are also blind (although that might just be two guys we know about who were really prolific; most rímur are anonymous so it's hard to say. But it is perhaps convenient that this also links them to A Great Poet of Old, namely Homer).
The other thing that rímur-poets really like to bring up in their mansöngvar is the myth of the mead of poetry, which I will not recount here except to say that Óðinn nicked it from a giant, and also that some dwarves used it to buy safe passage off a skerry once, so it's poetically termed 'ship of the dwarves' because it's the thing that brought them safely across the sea. Every single medieval mansöngur, if one exists at all, refers to this myth in some way, even if it's just by having the 'I made you some poetry' bit use a kenning for 'poetry' that references the myth.* And poets have a lot of fun with this too! Iceland's a coastal community, they know about boats, so you get these extended metaphors about poets trying to board a boat to sample the mead of poetry and finding only the dregs because other, better poets got there first. Or they will describe the process of poetic composition in terms of ship-building: 'Here I nail together Suðri's [a dwarf name] boat'; 'Norðri's ship sets out from the harbour [= I'm about to start reciting the main bit now]'; 'the fine vessel has now been wrecked on the rocks [=I'm going to stop reciting now]'. They'll also speak of poetry as smíð, which means a work of craftsmanship, usually physical craftsmanship (obviously cognate with smithing in English), and of brewing the ale of Óðinn, so they're really into metaphors of physical craft when it comes to the intellectual craft of poetry, which I think is really neat.
*kennings = poetic circumlocutions, e.g. 'snake of the belt' is a sword because swords are vaguely snake-shaped and hang from a belt. Common poetry kennings are '[drink/liquid/ale/wine/mead] of [any of Óðinn's literally dozens of names]' e.g. 'Berlingr's wine', and the aforementioned 'ship of the dwarves' - poetic Icelandic has literally dozens of words for different kinds of ships and also literally dozens of dwarf names, so you can get a long way without repeating yourself.
So all these things that I've mentioned that poets like to bring up - old age, unluckiness in love, poets as craftsmen - become more and more tropified as time goes on, which in turn leads to these imaginative and extended reworkings of the metaphor. No longer can you just say 'I'm old and no one fancies me', no, it's 'My only assignations now are with Elli, wink wink, here's a long description of our date'. So you end up with this very codified image of The Ideal Rímur-Poet as an old man,* ideally blind, ideally unmarried, incredibly self-deprecating about his poetry, and because that's how everyone else talks, it's self-reinforcing.
*there is one (1) known female rímur-poet from the medieval period, the poet of Landrés rímur, who unfortunately didn't write many mansöngur stanzas but is doing her best with the 'unlucky in love' bit, although her lover (male) seems to have died rather than ditched her, which is a novelty.
Anyway, it's cool and weird and fun and as I say, only me and Hans Kuhn care, academically speaking.
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https://www.tumblr.com/lovl3igh/748217725348872192/team-green-in-new-promo-be-like-why-tg-should?source=share
These actors will literally be hated and bullied, what are you talking about? If you open Tom's interviews, he adores Aegon, Ewan adores Aemond. For God's sake…
appearances of actors aside cause they all are bullied for that, especially matt, ewan and emma and racists comments too (i'm saying that just to be clear, i will comment only on actors actions)
you mean the actors would be bullied for supporting tg and going against tb... like ewan for praising aemond? or tom describing how would he kill rhaenyra if he could? or olivia sympathizing with alicent? bffr
these are really some of least agressive tweets, but still negative towards tb actors:
calling real person a bastard for playing silly game (also harry was attacked for choosing maester over alicent but when ewan chose in one game daemon over alicent it was fine), making fun of their character's death, bethany was being eaten up for going tb while tgc did the same with tg and no one said a word, the insinuations that harry collett did sexual favors for the role of jace (mind you, he was 16!! when he landed the part and i'm not even gonna comment on harassing elliot that way, creating fanarts and ships luke x adult people with using 14yo elliot's face), being compared to animals, emma is being constantly insulted and misgendered by tg who hates rhaenyra and the same goes with phoebe cause they said one sentence in promo video...
i'm not saying tg cast don't experience that kind of behaviour, sure they do. while it's not true that they don't anymore speak praising their characters or tg cause they do, especially tgc. the truth is they didn't say anything here what would be worthy argument that aegon should be the king because it's simply not true. what could they say? "aegon is the man" doesn't matter, law of inheritance the crown doesn't work that way. "rhaenyra has three bastards" it's about her claim, not jace's. "daemon would be terrible consort, too close to power" sooo unlike aegon the rapist who actually would be a king? "rhaenyra slept with more than one man" you try to say it in 2024. what they can say?? the show and books clearly stated the greens are usurpers, the actors know their characters are wrong. ewan gave motives of aemond but the rest of them didn't even try that
i literally went on twitter to look for that kind of stuff and like i said - there's so many insults about actors' appearances but speaking only about their opinions about teams, what i see is team black that is being constantly attacked, especially the young ones and/or black actors. whenever they have their promo or speak well or team black there's always bunch of people who will attack them and i don't even count "they're boring" cause while it's stupid, it's not really an attack ig. while in case of bullying for appearance i don't go against one team, that's here it's very clear to me that tg stans many times crossed the line
actors still speak well on their characters and tg, so stop that bs, the problem here was that they didn't have anything to say. also sooo which one, they can't say anything to not be bullied or they show how much they love their characters? no mention that you can love a character and still see they're wrong lmao
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I want to talk about Harry Potter.
Well. Sort of. I want to talk about Harry Potter in a roundabout way, in that, I want to talk about the reaction my friend group had when shit started really going down with That Bitch Rowling.
Because Rowling is a horrible person. She’s a TERF, a denier of Nazi Crimes, homophobic, anti-Semitic, the list goes on and on (and most recently, has been attacking a trans soccer manager, if my dash is to be believed? Somehow, she just seems more cartoonishly evil with each passing day). But this isn’t about That Bitch Rowling, not really. Or if it is, she’s merely a footnote in the story.
Harry Potter was, and I think this is true for many of us, a large part of my childhood. While the writing may be mediocre at best, it was wildly influential. I didn’t know a single kid that wasn’t hoping for a letter to Hogwarts. It was a Big Deal for a lot of people, and that included my friend group. My friend group, which is made up of members of the LGBTQ+ community. My friend group, which includes a young lady who we didn’t always know was a lady. I’m sure you can see where this might be going.
The day I got a tear filled phone call about That Bitch Rowling was, frankly, heartbreaking. She was mad because a woman she had respected up until now didn’t respect her. She wanted to get rid of her copies of the books, but didn’t want to donate them. I never want to hear her cry like that again. So I made a decision.
I told her to hold onto her books for just a little while longer. I phoned the group. I figured out when everyone could get together for a weekend, and when I had hammered out dates, I packed up my car, and drove the six hundred miles back to my childhood home.
In the passenger’s seat, was my set of Harry Potter books.
Excluding my trans friend, there were seven of us. I had made a plan, and my father had the space to enact it - I grew up on acres of land; complete with 200 year old oak tree, creek in the woods in the backyard, and a massive fire pit.
Nostalgia and youth, I find, paint everything with a rose tinted hue; if Rowling had just kept her mouth shut, I’m sure many of us would have looked back on the Harry Potter series with some amount of shame. But I don’t think it would have suffered the sort of fall from grace that led us to this point.
The fire pit is important for several reasons. For example, it had been the popular gathering place for my friend group of literal decades at this point. Small towns mean that you know everyone from a very early age. We lived right beside the woods, so we used the fire pit to burn the leaves, and the branches storms took down, of which there were many. And when the first six of my friends rolled down the half mile driveway that day, I had already collect enough wood to get a decent fire going.
Six of my friends. We told the seventh a later time. We wanted to be prepared, and anyway, we all had the same cargo (six sets of seven books joined mine on a rickety folding table). I put them to work collecting more firewood (is it really a good bonfire if you’re not risking setting the barn on fire?).
By the time our last member rolled up, I had a fire going.
She had her set of those damn books too.
(There is a visceral grief that comes from being let down by your childhood heroes, and I fully believe that That Bitch Rowling embodies the phrase “never meet your heroes,” because folks, as a general rule, I am not a fan of burning books. But I was prepared to make an exception.)
We burned our copies of the Harry Potter books that day, all eight of us. They were well read, beaten to hell and back, with cracked spines, and dents in corners, and pieces of the pages missing where we had bent down the corners one too many times. And I won’t lie to anyone. We cried. Tears of sorrow and rage, for the piece of our childhood that we were choosing to give up, because to keep it would be to disrespect the woman we had known and loved for longer than we’d ever had those books.
Letting go sucked. But it was the right thing to do.
When they were gone, we put out the fire, went inside, and built the pillow fort of our dreams. We marathoned Star Wars, and ordered too many pizzas, and had way too much soda. We fell asleep playing Risk, because that’s what our friend choose, and in the morning, I made waffles with chocolate chips and too much maple syrup.
I wanted to talk about this, not just because this is a fond memory for me (even though it is), but because one of my coworkers confessed to me that they hated Rowling, and everything she stood for, and they refused to have anything else to do with the Harry Potter franchise, but they just couldn’t bring themselves to get rid of the books.
I said I was happy to host another book burning.
But I wanted to write this down because I know that sometimes it’s hard to take that final step, to leave behind that last thing. So for anyone who needs to hear it, it’s okay to grieve the things we loose when we grow up. Letting go can be hard, but I promise you’ll end up better off. It’s been awhile since things really went downhill, but I maintain that, in this case, death of the author is nonexistent, and it is better to have loved and then lost, than to hold on too tight.
Don’t hurt yourself on the shattered remains of your childhood magic.
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I don’t know how I’ve got onto anti-billy posts (I mean I do know, because they constantly occupy his fucking tag and obsess over everyone who likes him) but they are absolutely fucking vile. I feel like I should clean my eyes with a bleach for the amount of bullying and hateful behaviour they display. With the way they act you would think that Billy is comparable to fucking H*tler, not to mention the jabs at how other fans are ‘clearly’ racists and abusive because they like his character. Or how they lack media literacy? Is it me, or does that make no fucking sense? As far as I’m aware liking Hannibal doesn’t make you a human flesh connoisseur, liking Joker doesn’t make you a fucking crazy murderer clown, and liking Loki doesn’t make you a semi-genocidal demi-god. It’s fucking fiction, it doesn’t exist, liking someone doesn’t translate to being like that fucking person (it really should be a general motto of this fandom, because people forget or don’t understand that simple stupid fact).
Both of these examples just scream lack of media literacy, if not to go as far as to say lack of critical thinking skills. “Main character you are supposed to like” - so basically we are taking everything surface level, no deeper thoughts, no nothing? Just blindly guided by who you are supposed to like and who you are not supposed to like because show told you to do that?(even though it didn’t actually tell you shit, but go off) Are you able to form a single opinion that comes from your own thought process or do you just do everything someone else tells you to do?
Not to mention, fireworks and applause for a teenage, abused character to die a gruesome death after being literally mentally tortured and controlled by an inter-dimensional monster. You should get a Nobel Peace Price for your clear ability to empathise with anyone (I know, I know, you were not told to do that, it’s hard to form your own critical opinions). Just go around bullying an extremely fucking safe part of the fandom that does nothing wrong to anyone, and just posts their silly little stories and concept arts and protects other characters that are being bullied by this kind of toxic ST fans. What a puritan fucking moral warrior behaviour, absolutely vile.
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