Books by Adam Oberlin
Teaching Documents by Adam Oberlin
Papers by Adam Oberlin
Mediävistik, 2020
While descriptive and allegorical depictions of actual meteorological phenomena appear throughout... more While descriptive and allegorical depictions of actual meteorological phenomena appear throughout medieval German literary genres and text types, the great bulk of weather vocabulary is comprised of phraseological and figurative units that make use of weather terms as a signifier of human, divine, and other qualities This article addresses a broad corpus of Middle High German texts to outline some of the uses of these units and the variety of their forms that typify this largely figurative domain of lexis and human experience.
New Norse Studies: A Journal on the Literature and Culture of Medieval Scandinavia is the new ann... more New Norse Studies: A Journal on the Literature and Culture of Medieval Scandinavia is the new annual of Islandica, a series in Icelandic and Norse studies, founded in 1908 and published by the Fiske Icelandic Collection, Cornell University Library. Devoted to all facets of the written tradition of medieval Iceland and Scandinavia, NNS seeks to bring the insights of multiple disciplines to bear upon Norse texts.
Digital Philology: A Journal of Medieval Cultures, 2015
STUF - Language Typology and Universals, 2016
One of the functions of the dative is to mark non-prototypical subjects, i. e. subjects that some... more One of the functions of the dative is to mark non-prototypical subjects, i. e. subjects that somehow deviate from the agentive prototype. The Germanic languages, as all subbranches of Indo-European (cf. Barðdal et al. 2012. Reconstructing constructional semantics: The dative subject construction in Old Norse‐Icelandic, Latin, Ancient Greek, Old Russian and Old Lithuanian. Studies in Language 36(3). 511–547), exhibit structures where the subject or the subject-like argument is not in the nominative case, but in the accusative, dative or genitive, for instance. The focus of this article is on the dative, leaving accusative and genitive subjects aside, in particular homing in on lexical semantic similarities and differences between the individual Germanic languages. We compare Modern Icelandic, Modern Faroese, and Modern German, on the one hand, and the historical Germanic languages, i. e. Gothic, Old English, Old Saxon, Old High German, Middle English, Middle Dutch, Middle German, Old Norse-Icelandic and Old Swedish, on the other. The goal is to document the semantic development of the construction across time. This, in turn, is a part of a more general research program aiming at reconstructing the origin and the development of the Dative Subject Construction in Germanic and Indo-European. As the Germanic languages are both genealogically and areally related, we suggest a computational model aiming at disentangling genealogical and geographical factors, in order to estimate to which degree the two interact with each other across languages and across historical eras.
This dissertation arose from discussions with my advisor and committee chair, Professor Anatoly L... more This dissertation arose from discussions with my advisor and committee chair, Professor Anatoly Liberman. His tireless dedication to the full spectrum of Germanic philology was the deciding factor in my application to the University of Minnesota, and it is with gratitude that I recall five years of advice, commentary, and encouragement. I owe thanks similarly to the members of my committee, Professors Kaaren Grimstad, Ray Wakefield, and Andrew Scheil, all of whom have impacted my scholarship and interests significantly, and whose examples as teachers and mentors are worthy of emulation. Without the generous and enthusiastic support of the faculty and staff of the Department of German, Scandinavian and Dutch; the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute; the Center for Medieval Studies; the Center for German and European Studies; and other departments and institutes I would not have finished this project and several others as quickly or with as much ease. The aid of people too numerous to list here was indispensable in obtaining many fellowships, grants, teaching positions, and other opportunities.
Neophilologus
In this paper I present evidence for the pervasive influence of hagiographic themes, including t... more In this paper I present evidence for the pervasive influence of hagiographic themes, including the miraculous, shrines and relics, and unrelenting mercy, on the biography of Hákon Hákonarson, King of Norway from 1217 to 1263. These elements are extant to a greater degree in Hákon’s biography than in any saga of the Heimskringla save that of St Olaf. Furthermore, I argue that the saga’s portrayal of the king as a saintly figure serves to compare him to the greatest Christian kings of the preceding centuries, even if only within the memorialization of the text itself and not in later memory. Studies of the saga remain largely historical, providing a (sometimes contested) backdrop of factual information over which studies of other literary and historical texts are made. With the current contribution I offer a different view, namely that of a richly textured royal biography that draws on the dominant literary forms of its day.
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Books by Adam Oberlin
Teaching Documents by Adam Oberlin
Papers by Adam Oberlin
NNS welcomes contributions to scholarship relating to all aspects of Old Norse-Icelandic literature, including but not limited to: literary and textual culture; mythology, folklore, and history of religions; archaeology and material culture; language, linguistics, philology, and runology; medieval history; and comparative literary studies.
NNS does not solicit or publish reviews of individual books. Review essays concerning larger trends, topics, and bodies of scholarship will be considered.