SOURCE: Madelung, A. Margaret Arent. “Literary Perspectives.” In The Laxdoela Saga: Its Structural Patterns, pp. 147-96. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972.

In the following excerpt, Madelung presents a detailed structural analysis of the Laxdaela Saga, emphasizing such features as balance, symmetry, recurrence, comparison, and temporal patterning in various elements of the work.

The Social and Moral Order

Although knowledge of the historical, social, and cultural background of a literary work often contributes appreciably to the better understanding of it, an artistic interpretation may, conversely, illuminate with even greater penetration the vitality of the age which produced it. Laxdœla presents the cultural ethos prevailing in Iceland from the time of Settlement to the author's own day. In creating so very real a world in which the characters move and act, the author has set before us the familiar events of that world: births, deaths, wooings, marriage...