So, I got a copy of Lee Hollander's translation of the Poetic Edda. Geez, when people said he was using deliberately archaic language, they weren't kidding. I'll stick with the Victorian! On the other hand, he's got a lot of good notes and more recent scholarship in his foreword, on the dating and such. The Atlikvida gets put at about the 9th century.
I am not particularly worried about justifying the use of the material in an Anglo-Saxon context. Unless you believe that Wulf and Eadwacer is about Signy, the Niflungs and the Volsungs aren't represented in the Old English literature. On the other hand, other elements of the great Germanic myth-cycles are (e.g., Beowulf wearing armor forged by Weyland; Weyland referenced in the poem Deor; and famously, "What has Ingeld to do with Christ?"
I suppose it's possible that there's a Norse/English connection but no English/Germanic connection, but I don't really believe that. I can't prove it right at this moment, but I'm pretty certain of it.
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I also had an interesting conversation with my husband on art and artists in the Middle Ages and today, coming out of some of the ideas I've gotten from the Practice (nee Performance)-Based Research class. He wanted to emphasize the importance of patronage to the artistic process of yore; I acknowledge it, but I also think that individual artists were more than just mouthpieces for patrons.
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Slowing starting to wonder what the problems being researched in "Practice-Based Research" are. I had assumed it was matters pertaining to the performance itself? As in: using practice and self-examination, we will research what works and doesn't work for our arts. Now from what I'm hearing, I think it might be more along the lines of "Can people be made to do/be/feel XYZ if the artist does ABC?" Still not entirely sure.
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