Insults, violence, and the meaning of lytegian in the Old English Battle of Maldon
The history of impoliteness — of which insults are a part — and violence are intertwined. In medieval Germanic cultural history, this link manifests itself in historical-pragmatic contexts such as sennur, whettings, and flyting-to-fighting scenarios, which are surveyed in this paper. The ethological origins of such interactions are called into question with reference to the Freudian death drive. Based on the connection between insults and violence, a novel definition of Old English lytegian in the Battle of Maldon is offered, namely ‘jeer, insult’, with comparative support from Icelandic.
Cited by (2)
Cited by two other publications
Jucker, Andreas H. & Joanna Kopaczyk
2017.
Historical (Im)politeness. In
The Palgrave Handbook of Linguistic (Im)politeness,
► pp. 433 ff.
Bryan, Eric Shane
2013.
Indirect Aggression: A Pragmatic Analysis of the Quarrel of the Queens in Völsungasaga, Þiðreks Saga, and Das Nibelungenlied.
Neophilologus 97:2
► pp. 349 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 4 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.