ABSTRACT
The focus of the article is on how things and objects play an elemental role in the structure of the narrative, as well in the plot development in the 19th-century Icelandic novel Sagan af Arna yngri ljufling. The novel was written by the scholar and a district magistrate Jón Espólín (1769–1836) during the 1830s, during which time Icelandic literature was evolving away from the more fantasy-oriented literature towards more realist works that somewhat resemble the modern novel in Iceland. In the novel one finds many ordinary things that one might at first glance easily overlook, but by applying the new materialisms theories of agency, especially those presented by Karen Barad and Jane Bennett, a manuscript turns out to play pivotal role in the frame narrative employed in the novel. And a pair of shoes and a walking stick emerge as pillars of the plot development. The symbiosis and entanglements of humans and things within literature are explored in the article with a special focus on non-human agency and agency as an assemblage.
