Ian Felce. William Morris and the Icelandic
Sagas. Woodbridge: D.S.
Brewer, 2018.
Reviewed by William Biel
(william.biel@uconn.edu).
Ian Felce’s William Morris and the Icelandic
Sagas concerns itself with Morris’ developing concept of heroism, for Morris
meaning the ways which men in particular might and should lead a politically
engaged life. The focus remains squarely upon Morris’ art, but that focus is
thoroughly contextualized by the public goals Morris aimed to serve through
creative production. Felce gives a nuanced and persuasive account of Morris’
personal development toward atheism and socialism through his reading and
rewriting of medieval Icelandic literature.
Felce situates the book as a corrective to prior
work on Morris, which he finds draws inaccurate conclusions because of those
writers’ lack of familiarity with Old Norse. Felce challenges scholars who he
believes, lacking the necessary training to compare Morris’ texts with their
sources, offer erroneous explanations for Morris’ creative output. Felce takes
especial issue with two kinds of criticism, that which he finds over-emphasizes
Morris’ marital problems and that which unproductively questions Morris’ skill
as a translator. In the first case Felce objects to suggestions that Morris’
attraction to Old Norse was primarily an escape from the stress of his wife,
Jane’s, possible affair with Dante Rosetti. Felce convincingly demonstrates
Morris’ interest in Old Norse from adolescence onward, before even meeting
Jane, and his partnership with Eiríkur Magnússon, Morris’ Icelandic tutor, as
forces unto themselves. Felce does not deny some impact on Morris due to his
wife’s intimacy with Rosetti, but he emphasizes the sagas attracted Morris for
their own virtues, providing an opportunity to grow artistically and
philosophically, and not merely as a distraction from problems at home. As to
the quality of Morris’ work, Felce suggests criticism that either apologizes
for or attacks Morris’ skill as a translator fails to uncover the motivations
behind Morris’ choice of style. Felce sees Morris moving toward increasingly
hyper-literal translation in an effort to present medieval Iceland as a kindred
culture to Victorian England. In so doing, Morris hoped to inspire communal
values aligned with his own socialism. Felce believes Morris honestly
miscalculated the linguistic skill of his readership, and thus the extent to
which they might identify with saga age Icelanders. Thus, Felce undertakes
close comparison of Morris’ translations alongside their Old Norse sources to
reveal nuances of Morris’ inner life and public commitments lacking in other
scholarship.
The book follows a chronological structure
across which Felce traces Morris’ poetic and philosophical evolution. The
introduction provides Morris’ general biography oriented around his meeting
Eiríkur Magnússon and his subsequent period (1868-76) translating and adapting
Old Norse works. Chapter 1 contrasts Morris’ earlier inspiration primarily from
the Arthurian Grail quest with his turn toward the sagas as a creative
wellspring. Felce outlines Morris’ initial attraction to the transcendentalism
of the Grail legend, which by 1868 becomes increasingly frustrated as Morris
moves toward atheism. “The Lovers of Gudrun” from The Earthly Paradise
represents a turning point in which Morris adapts Laxdæla saga’s love
triangle into a quest structure familiar from Arthuriana, but it rejects the
transcendental in favor of the existential. The Kiartan of Morris’ “Lovers”
finds ennoblement by recognizing the Edenic world of his early days as
tragically devoid of meaning, but enduring nonetheless. Chapter 2 highlights
Morris’ infidelity to his sources in ethical rather than linguistic terms, that
is to say, in his treatment of honor and shame as conveyed by Old Norse níð:
both “malice” and “perversion.” Felce acknowledges obscenity legislation
necessarily affected Morris’ translation, but argues Morris was also personally
uncomfortable with the brutality to which saga protagonists are often motivated
in order to defend their sense of heteronormative masculinity. Seeing such
sexual violence as petty cruelty, Morris’ versions of saga heroes rather serve
more abstract moral concepts approved by Morris and his audience. One example
comes from The Story of Kormak. In the Old Norse original, Kormáks
saga, Kormak defeats an opponent, Bersi the Dueller, by wounding him in the
buttocks with his sword. The saga understands Kormak thus symbolically implies
Bersi is the willing recipient of a male-male sex act, slandering Bersi as a
pervert. Bersi’s wife, Steingerd, consequently leaves him. Morris removes the
sexual connotations and shame directed at Bersi in his translation. But he also
retains Steingerd divorcing him, including the saga’s tone of moral approval
over her choice, though it now seems odd and harsh to a modern audience. As
such, Felce suggests that Morris’ characters sometimes suffer from a
misalignment between their motivations and actions. However, Felce stresses
Morris shows no self-awareness of this infidelity, but rather believed himself
to be magnifying an underlying heroic ethos in the saga for his Victorian
audience.
The first two chapters therefore provide a
baseline for Morris’ idiosyncratic conception of his sources, against which the
growth of his later work can be contextualized. Chapter 3 studies Morris’
exploration of heroic endurance through an ethics of incapacity. Morris’
treatment of Grettir the Strong dwells on the outlaw’s firm resolve despite
decreasing physical ability and social debility. Grettir’s resilience sharpens
the existential courage Morris attributes to Kiartan in “Lovers.” Chapter 4
addresses Morris’ progressively literal style in his translation of Heimskringla.
Felce proposes Morris wanted to show his English audience how similar medieval
Iceland and Victorian England were — or rather, could be. Morris thought the
way of life depicted by the sagas manifested the socialist values he wanted to
see reform England. He therefore hoped to reveal the two places as sibling
cultures by stressing similar linguistic forms, appealing to ancient virtues to
awaken a socialist conscience in his audience. But, Felce says, Morris
misjudged how alienating his archaic style would be to his readers. Chapter 5
continues to develop the themes running through the first three chapters,
seeing in Sigurd the Volsung Morris’ mature concept of the “deedful
measure.” Felce takes Morris’ “deedfulness” as an approval of acting
spontaneously by embracing life’s brevity. Against spontaneous Sigurd are
gathered foes motivated by fear of death. Sigurd’s opponents foolishly try
preserving a status quo that cannot last and thereby unwittingly hasten
universal ruin. For Morris, the contrast means heroic action is only possible
when dedicated to a common good that celebrates both human potential and
frailty, without possibility of eternal salvation. Chapter 6 attends to Morris’
original fiction inspired by rather than directly translated from medieval
literature. Morris turns from a historical Iceland to an imagined world based
on Continental Germanic tribes, yet still exalting the heroic ideals developed
through the translations. Felce suggests Morris’ embrace of a wholly fictional
world helped inspire 20th century medievalist writers, such as C.S. Lewis and
Tolkien.
Felce displays easy facility with Old Norse,
critical for his comparisons with Morris’ translations. Felce also increases
the accessibility of his own readings with footnotes offering his own
translations of Norse passages. This apparatus extends to prose re-orderings of
difficult skaldic verses, a quite useful inclusion. The only possible critique
comes to mind regarding the book’s structure: the chronological structure of
the book leaves Chapter 4 slightly out of place. The subject of Morris’ literal
translation style seems more thematically akin to the contents of Chapters 1
and 2. As the fourth chapter, it breaks the arc between Grettir’s heroism
through incapacity to Sigurd’s deedfulness as an embrace of frailty and
transitory human life. This is, though, merely a consequence of the
organizational program, which is otherwise sensible and serviceable.
Felce convincingly argues for a more nuanced
perspective on Morris’ art, attendant to the complexity of his life. Felce
thereby recovers an inner life for Morris motivating his public aims in ways
unnoticed by prior scholarship. De-emphasizing the impact of Jane’s involvement
with Rosetti recasts Morris’ work as all the more politically committed. Felce
depicts Morris as a founder of modern English language Old Norse studies,
providing a potential history of the field rooted more in social justice than
national-colonial projects. Old Norse studies, and medievalists in general, can
always benefit from such a project of recovery. By that same project, Felce points
to ways scholars of nineteenth century art might draw connections between
creative output and political engagement by Morris and his contemporaries.
Studies of twentieth-century fantasy can also be enriched by more fully
understanding the intellectual tradition behind writers such as Tolkien.
William Biel
University of Connecticut
