Emotion in Old Norse Literature

Draws on Old Norse literary heritage to explore questions of emotion as both a literary motif and as a social phenomenon. Authors throughout history have relied on the emotional make-up of their readers and audiences to make sense of the behaviours and actions of fictive characters. But how can a narrative voice contained in a text evoke feelings that are ultimately never real or actual, but a figment of a text, a fictive reality created out of words? How does one reconcile interiority - a presu