SOURCE: Hoare, Dorothy M. “The Dreamer in Contact with Icelandic Saga.” In The Works of Morris and of Yeats in Relation to Early Saga Literature, pp. 50-76. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1937.

In the following excerpt, Hoare examines Morris' translations and adaptations of the Volsunga Saga, arguing that his rendition of it changes the nature of the original text and replaces its direct style with dense medieval prose.

It is this writer [William Morris] (who is following his own natural bent when describing the slow-moving pictures of his fancy) who attempts to deal with the vivid, impressive, passionate strength of the Norse tales. How individual a body of literature they are has already been seen; how different, too, from the “sweet” pathos, the dallying sentiment, the tender feeling, which is evident often in Morris' original work. This difference is emphasised strikingly, in a comparison of Morris' translations and...