The Ciel Show: 'Kristin Lavransdatter' and the historical novel

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Tuesday, October 28, 2008

'Kristin Lavransdatter' and the historical novel

I've been reading this lately. It's a trilogy written by Sigrid Undset in 1920, an historical novel following a woman's life in medieval Norway. The translation works so hard at maintaining the flavor of the time and place, and the idiom of the culture, that at times it is challenging to read: it is richly convoluted with a kind of twisty syntax that requires some real comprehension acrobatics to make sense of it--almost like reading in a foreign language you know with limited fluency. A while... Sign in to see full entry.

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