666 virelai
Thorstein marries Gudrid after returning from his
fruitless voyage, and they settle in Lyusfjord. But in
both stories his corpse sits up and prophesies that
Gudrid will marry again and have an illustrious
family.
Further, Leif ’s half sister Freydis is portrayed
differently in the two sagas. In the Greenlanders’
Saga, she takes her own expedition to Vinland,
where she brutally murders her partners (killing
the women with an axe), and is cursed by Leif
when she arrives back in Greenland. In Eirik’s Saga
she is a part of Karlsefni’s expedition, where the
pregnant Freydis distinguishes herself for her fe-
rocity by beating her naked breast with a sword to
frighten off Skraeling attackers.
A final difference in the sagas is the amount of
space devoted to Thorfinn Karlsefni’s voyage in
Eirik’s Saga, where it clearly dominates the story.
Thorfinn, who has married Gudrid, Thorstein
Eiriksson’s widow, takes a large expedition to Vin-
land in an attempt to trade with the natives and
set up a permanent settlement. Here Gudrid gives
birth to their son, Snorri, the first European born
on the North American continent. Ultimately in-
ternal quarrels among the Norsemen and the an-
tagonism of the Skraelings force them back to
Iceland. In both sagas Thorfinn and Gudrid settle
in the north of Iceland at Skagafjord, and Gudrid’s
descendants include three prominent Icelandic
bishops.
The differences in the sagas and their inclusion
of supernatural or marvelous incidents have made
their historical value questionable and for some
time raised doubts about whether such voyages ac-
tually took place. There is some independent cor-
roboration of the tales, however: The German
historian Adam of Bremen wrote, in ca. 1075, that
he learned of Norse voyages to “Wineland” from
the Swedish king Swen Estrithsson. Later historical
references also suggest that, though the Greenlan-
ders gave up trying to colonize Vinland, they still
made occasional trips there to gather timber, even
through the 14th century. The similarities of the
sagas—their focus on Leif Eiriksson as well as on
Karlsefni and Gudrid and the Skraelings—suggest
that the details of an original oral account of the
Vinland voyages, passed down through two and a
half centuries to two separate authors, was dis-
torted by oral tradition but retained some basic
historical facts.
Attempts to locate the actual site of Vinland on
the east coast of North America were fruitless
until 1961, when the Norwegian archaeologist
Helge Ingstad discovered an unquestionably
Norse site at the northern tip of Newfoundland,
called L’Anse aux Meadows. Ingstad’s discovery
proved that the accounts in the sagas were not
simply romantic fabrications, but memories of
real events. But there are no grapes in Newfound-
land, and in all medieval accounts it is the natu-
rally occurring grapevines that gave the place its
Norse name. This suggests that Leif ’s Vinland
must have been further south—but Ingstad’s site
remains the only Norse site ever discovered in the
Americas.
Bibliography
Ingstad, Helge. Westward to Vinland: The Discovery of
Pre-Columbian Norse House-sites in North Amer-
ica. Translated by Erik J. Friis. London: Cape,
1969.
Jones, Gwyn, trans. Eirik the Red and Other Icelandic
Sagas. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980.
———. The Norse Atlantic Saga: Being the Norse Voy-
ages of Discovery and Settlement to Iceland, Green-
land, and North America. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1986.
Magnusson, Magnus, and Hermann Palsson. The
Vinland Sagas. Harmondworth, U.K.: Penguin,
1965.
The Sagas of Icelanders: A Selection. With a preface by
Jane Smiley and an introduction by Robert Kel-
logg. New York: Viking, 1997.
virelai (virelay)
The virelai was one of the fixed forms of French
verse of the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries. Usually
set to music, one form of the virelai used short
lines and was divided into stanzas, each using only
two rhymes. In general the last rhyme of one
stanza became the first rhyme of the next stanza,
so that the virelai might rhyme aabaab bbcbbc ccd-
ccd etc., with no determinate length. This sort of
virelai might also have two opening lines that
would occur intermittently as a refrain. A second
form of the virelai alternated longer and shorter
lines within stanzas, with the shorter lines of one
stanza providing the rhyme for the longer lines of
the next stanza. Such a virelai might rhyme abab
bcbc cdcd, where the first and third lines of each
stanza are long and the second and fourth are
short. Again this kind of virelai could be any
length.
Like other fixed forms, including the RONDEAU
and the BALLADE, the virelai was generally used as a
vehicle for conventional expressions of love, al-
though another type of virelai was called the real-
istic type, and was intended to describe vividly
some active scene.
The virelai was never a popular form in En-
gland, though in his prologue to The LEGEND OF
GOOD WOMEN, CHAUCER claims to have written
some in his youth. But the best known French
poets of the 14th and 15th centuries, including
MACHAUT, DESCHAMPS, and CHRISTINE DE PIZAN,
wrote a number of virelais. Perhaps the best-
known example is this one by Eustache De-
schamps:
Sui je, sui je, sui je belle?
Il me semble, à mon avis,
Que j’ay beau front et doulz viz
Et la bouche vermeillette;
Dittes moy se je suis belle.
J’ay vers yeulx, petits sourcis,
Le chief blont, le nez traitis,
Ront menton, blanche gorgette;
Sui je, sui je, sui je belle?
J’ay dur sain et hault assis,
Lons bras, gresles doys aussis,
Et par le faulz sui greslette;
Dittes moy se je suis belle.
(Wilkins 1969, 79)
Vita nuova 667
And so on, for some 45 lines. Deschamps’s poem
(an unusual example of the first form of virelai
mentioned above) uses only two rhymes through-
out, plus the refrain. An example of the second
form is this one by Christine de Pizan:
En ce printemps gracieux
D’estre gai suis enviex
Tout à l’onnour
De ma dame, qui vigour
De ses doulz yeulz
Me donne, don’t par lesquielx
Vifs en baudour.
Toute riens fait son atour
De mener joye à son tour,
Bois et prez tieulx
Sont, qu’ilz semblent de verdour
Estre vestus et de flour
Et qui mieulx mieulx.
(Wilkins 1969, 93)
Note how varied is the line length of these open-
ing stanzas of Christine’s poem. But note that the
last short line of the first stanza does provide the
rhyme for the first long line of the second.
Bibliography
Wilkins, Nigel, ed. One Hundred Ballades, Rondeaux
and Virelais from the Late Middle Ages. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1969.
Vita nuova (New life) Dante Alighieri
(1295)
The Vita nuova is a collection of 31 of DANTE’s ear-
lier lyric poems, introduced, connected, and ex-
plained by 41 prose passages that narrate the story
of his love for the woman he called Beatrice
(“Bringer of Blessings”), and of her death in 1290,
and its devastating effect on the poet. Dante says he
began gathering his earlier poems about Beatrice
and putting them together to create what is essen-
tially a fictionalized autobiography when he was
27, that is, in 1292. Sometimes the poems recapit-
ulate the events narrated in the prose sections;
sometimes they present emotional reactions or
668 Vita nuova
ideas generated by the narrated experiences. The
arrangement of the poems reflects the develop-
ment of the young narrator’s attitudes about po-
etry, love, and his lady, from an early
self-centeredness through a focus on the perfec-
tions of the Lady herself, to a vision of the Lady as
the embodiment of heavenly attributes and the
symbol of heavenly love.
The form of alternating poetry and prose pas-
sages was not invented by Dante. It had been used
by BOETHIUS in his early sixth-century CONSOLA-
TION OF PHILOSOPHY, a text with which Dante was
certainly familiar. What is new in the Vita nuova is
the way that the prose passages keep the continu-
ous story going, while at the same time not only
explaining the occasion for the poems included,
but interpreting the poems from a technical per-
spective. This technical preoccupation is related to
Dante’s concern with structure and with numbers
so evident in the Vita nuova. The number 9, for
example, appears no less than 22 times in the
book: Dante first meets Beatrice in his ninth year;
he doesn’t see her again until nine years later, in
the ninth hour; he begins to write the Vita nuova
after nine more years. Nine as the square of 3,
number of the holy Trinity, would suggest for
Dante’s medieval audience the harmony of the di-
vinely created universe. A look at the book’s over-
all structure emphasizes this order and harmony:
The poems fall into three groups, each attached
to one of three CANZONI, the longer thematic
poems in the text. The second group of poems has
a canzone in the middle with four shorter poems
(mainly SONNETS) on either side. The first and
third groups each contain 11 poems, the first hav-
ing 10 short poems and a canzone, the third hav-
ing a canzone followed by 10 short poems. The
symmetry is inescapable.
Part of the effect is to focus attention on the
central poem of the book—the canzone beginning
“Domna pietosa e di novella etate” (A lady of tender
years, compassionate). The poem introduces the
poet’s premonition of Beatrice’s death, the central
event of the narrative. In addition this canzone
speaks of that death in language and imagery re-
calling the crucifixion of Christ, thereby suggesting
the ultimate end toward which Dante’s poetry is
developing. Dante, looking back at his love affair
and recreating it based on his new perspective and
understanding, wants to demonstrate the devel-
opment of his own attitudes as they are shaped by
his experiences. As he tells it, the early stages of his
love show him preoccupied with his own suffering,
focused on his own emotions and exploring them
at length, mainly in private, his lady being not
much more than a mirror to reflect back his view
of himself. At one point, denied a greeting by Beat-
rice, the young Dante returns to his room where,
he says, “I fell asleep like a little boy crying from a
spanking” (Musa 1973, 17).
When he is later convinced by certain unnamed
ladies of the town that his true happiness lay in
praising his lady rather than focusing on himself,
he writes the first of the major canzoni in the book,
the poem in section 19 beginning “Donne, ch’avete
intelletto d’amore” (Ladies, who have intelligence
of love). This poem, presented here legitimately as
a turning point in Dante’s career, concentrates on
Beatrice’s perfections, rather than Dante’s own
emotions. The angels of heaven desire to have
Beatrice with them, since heaven lacks perfection
without her. On earth her power is able to ennoble
those who look on her and, if they are worthy, to
bring them God’s salvation. Beatrice has thus be-
come the mediator between the poet and God
himself, and when he later has the premonition of
Beatrice’s death, the crucifixion imagery implies
her Christ-like nature: Just as the love of Christ
leads us heavenward and cannot be selfish, so (the
poem implies) the same must be said of Dante’s
love of Beatrice.
How much of the text reflects Dante’s real ex-
perience and how much reflects his reinterpreta-
tion of events years after Beatrice’s death is a moot
question; all we can do is look at the literary text as
he created it. Here the new attitude toward his
love is what ultimately enables him, after some
time, to accept her death and continue to see her
as a mediatrix for God’s love. The concluding son-
net of the Vita nuova, beginning “Oltre la spera che
più larga gira” (Beyond the sphere that makes the
widest round), depicts the lover’s sigh ascending
into heaven, where it sees his lady Beatrice in
splendor. Returning to the earth, however, the sigh
is unable to express the sight in a way Dante can
understand. He only hears the name of “Beatrice”
being uttered many times. But the Vita nuova ends
with the poet’s own “miraculous vision” that in-
spires him to write about Beatrice in a nobler way.
He ends by vowing to write of her “that which has
never been written of any other woman” (Musa
1973, 86). Nor does Dante write of her again until
she becomes the embodiment of Grace in his DI-
VINE C OMEDY: Ultimately Beatrice has become
what is promised at the end of the Vita nuova, a
conception made possible by the poet’s develop-
ment in the text of this little book from the ego-
tism typical of earlier COURTLY LOVE poetry to the
deification of the beloved typical of what Dante
called his own DOLCE STIL NOVO, his “sweet new
style” of poetry.
Bibliography
Ahern, John. “The New Life of the Book: The Implied
Reader of the Vita nuova,” Dante Studies 110
(1992): 1–16.
Baranski, Zygmunt G. “The ‘New Life’ of ‘Comedy’:
The Commedia and the Vita Nuova,” Dante Stud-
ies 113 (1995): 1–29.
Harrison, Robert Pogue. “Approaching the Vita
nuova,” in The Cambridge Companion to Dante,
edited by Rachel Jacoff. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993, 34–44.
Martinez, Ronald. “Mourning Beatrice: The Rhetoric
of Threnody in the Vita Nuova,” Modern Language
Notes 113 (1998): 1–29.
Musa, Mark, trans. Dante’s Vita Nuova: A Translation
and an Essay. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1973.
Volsunga Saga (Saga of the Volsungs)
(ca. 1270)
The Volsunga Saga is the best known of the fornal-
dar sogur (Legendary sagas) to come out of me-
dieval Iceland. Whereas the family sagas, such as
the much admired EGILS’S SAGA and NJAL’S SAGA,
deal with historical persons and their descendants,
the sagas of legend were written later, and imitate
the narrative prose style of the family sagas but
take Old Norse legend as their subject matter. The
Volsunga Saga 669
saga survives in one manuscript from about 1400,
and in later paper manuscripts, though it seems
clear that the saga was written between 1250 and
1300. The theme of the Volsunga Saga is the story
of Sigurd, Brynhild, and the ancient wars among
the Burgundians, Huns, and Goths—a story that
had been popular among the Germanic tribes for
centuries and that had been told, earlier in the 13th
century, by an anonymous German poet in the NI-
BELUNGENLIED. There is no evidence that the au-
thor of the Old Norse text knew the
Nibelungenlied; however, it is clear that the writer
based his saga on the earlier poems in the Old
Norse POETIC EDDA, where the events he describes
have their first Norse expression. Indeed, the au-
thor includes a number of poetic passages in his
text, including nearly the complete text of one of
the poems from the Edda.
The saga is complex and somewhat sprawling.
It might be divided into six major parts. The first
section of the text, depicting the birth of Volsung,
has no source in the Poetic Edda. Here Rerir, king
of the Huns, cannot beget an heir, and his prayers
are answered by a golden apple delivered to him by
the gods. His wife conceives after tasting the apple,
but Rerir dies before his child is born. His queen
remains pregnant for six winters, then dies, asking
that the child be cut from her womb. Thus Volsung
is born nearly a full-grown man. Volsung succeeds
his father as king of the Huns, marries Hljod, and
fathers 10 powerful sons, including Sigmund.
The second part of the saga, the story of Sig-
mund and his twin sister, Signy, has no counter-
part in the Edda either, and may be from a lost
poem. Here Signy marries Siggeir, the treacherous
king of the Goths. During the wedding feast, the
god Odin visits in disguise, and plunges the magic
sword Gram into the great oak tree in the center of
Volsung’s hall. The sword gives its wielder the
power to win all battles, but only Sigmund is able
to draw the sword from the tree. Siggeir tries to
buy the sword from Sigmund, but when he is de-
nied, he plots revenge. That revenge involves an
ambush of Volsung and his sons as they come to
visit Siggeir’s palace, and the death of all but Sig-
mund, who escapes with Signy’s help. For years
they plot revenge on Siggeir, and when Signy’s sons