Intertextual quanta in formula and translation

Abstract

Halldora B. Bjornsson's Icelandic translation of Beowulf (Bjömsson 1983) shares with other examples of textual transmission between closely related languages a tendency to transcend the exigencies of formal cognation by exploiting non-cognate correspondences which echo the forms of the original (cf. Kndtsson 1995). This article examines examples of this phenomenon in Bjdmsson's translation, treating them as intertextual connections between source and translation which cannot be adequately defined without invoking known formulaic relationships with other Anglo- Saxon and Old Norse poems. Bj6msson was widely read in Old Norse but was not familiar with Old English texts other than Beowulf. This article suggests that the formulaic links between the Old English corpus and Bjornsson's translation cannot be adequately explained by the Old Norse connection. A more promising approach is to treat them as autonomous echoic phenomena occurring as discrete and quantifiable surface strings which become activated as intertextualities when they are invoked as such.