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Titolo: | Audun and the polar bear [[electronic resource] ] : luck, law, and largesse in a medieval tale of risky business / / by William I. Miller |
Pubblicazione: | Leiden ; ; Boston, : Brill, 2008 |
Descrizione fisica: | 1 online resource (167 p.) |
Disciplina: | 839/.63 |
Soggetto topico: | Law, Scandinavian |
Sagas | |
Altri autori: | MillerWilliam Ian <1946-> |
Note generali: | Description based upon print version of record. |
Nota di bibliografia: | Includes bibliographical references (p. [147]-152) and index. |
Nota di contenuto: | Some technical matters : dates, origin, versions -- The story of Audun from the Westfjords (Audun's story) -- The commitment to plausibility -- Helping Thorir and buying the bear -- Dealing with King Harald -- Giving the bear to Svein : the interests in the bear -- Saying no to kings -- Eggs in one basket and market value -- Rome : self-impoverishment and self-confidence -- Repaying the bear -- Back to Harald : the yielding of accounts -- Audun's luck -- Richness and risk -- -- Motives -- Gaming the system : gift-ref -- Regiving and reclaiming gifts -- Relevant law -- Serious scarcity, self-interest and Audun's mother -- In the gift vs. in on the gift -- Gifts upward : repaying by receiving and funny money -- The obligation to accept -- Giving up and down hierarchies : of god(s), beggars, and equals -- Nadad and Abihu : sacrifice, caprice, and binding god and kings -- Funny money that is not so funny -- Of free and closing gifts -- Coda : the whiteness of the bear. |
Sommario/riassunto: | Audun’s Story is the tale of an Icelandic farmhand who buys a polar bear in Greenland for no other reason than to give it to the Danish king, half a world away. It can justly be listed among the finest pieces of short fiction in world literature. Terse in the best saga style, it spins a story of complex competitive social action, revealing the cool wit and finely-calibrated reticence of its three main characters: Audun, Harald Hardradi, and King Svein. The tale should have much to engage legal and cultural historians, anthropologists, economists, philosophers, and students of literature. The story’s treatment of gift-exchange is worthy of the fine anthropological and historical writing on gift-exchange; its treatment of face-to-face interaction a match for Erving Goffman. |
Titolo autorizzato: | Audun and the polar bear |
ISBN: | 1-282-39926-8 |
9786612399268 | |
90-474-4344-6 | |
Formato: | Materiale a stampa |
Livello bibliografico | Monografia |
Lingua di pubblicazione: | Inglese |
Record Nr.: | 9910778691303321 |
Lo trovi qui: | Univ. Federico II |
Opac: | Controlla la disponibilità qui |