The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel

The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel PDF Author: Ralph O'Connor
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191649430
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
Irish saga literature represents the largest collection of vernacular narrative in existence from the early Middle Ages, using the tools of Christian literacy to retell myths and legends about the pagan past. This unique corpus remains marginal to standard histories of Western literature: its tales are widely read, but their literary artistry remains a puzzle to many even within Celtic studies. This book, the first to offer a systematic literary analysis of any single native Irish tale, aims to show how one particularly celebrated saga 'works' as a story: the Middle Irish tale Togail Bruidne Da Derga (The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel), which James Carney called 'the finest saga of the early period'. This epic tale tells how the legendary king Conaire was raised by a shadowy Otherworld to the kingship of Tara and, after a fatal error of judgement, was hounded by spectres to an untimely death at Da Derga's Hostel at the hands of his own foster-brothers. By turns lyrical and laconic, and rich in native mythological imagery, the story is told with a dramatic intensity worthy of Greek tragedy, and the intricate symmetry of its narrative procedure recalls the visual patterning of illuminated manuscripts such as The Book of Kells. This book invites the reader to enjoy and understand this literary masterpiece, explaining its narrative artistry within its native, classical and biblical literary contexts. Against a historical backdrop of shifting ideologies of Christian kingship, it interprets the saga's possible significance for contemporary audiences as a questioning exploration of the challenges and paradoxes of kingship.

The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel

The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel PDF Author: Ralph O'Connor
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191649430
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 400

Get Book

Book Description
Irish saga literature represents the largest collection of vernacular narrative in existence from the early Middle Ages, using the tools of Christian literacy to retell myths and legends about the pagan past. This unique corpus remains marginal to standard histories of Western literature: its tales are widely read, but their literary artistry remains a puzzle to many even within Celtic studies. This book, the first to offer a systematic literary analysis of any single native Irish tale, aims to show how one particularly celebrated saga 'works' as a story: the Middle Irish tale Togail Bruidne Da Derga (The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel), which James Carney called 'the finest saga of the early period'. This epic tale tells how the legendary king Conaire was raised by a shadowy Otherworld to the kingship of Tara and, after a fatal error of judgement, was hounded by spectres to an untimely death at Da Derga's Hostel at the hands of his own foster-brothers. By turns lyrical and laconic, and rich in native mythological imagery, the story is told with a dramatic intensity worthy of Greek tragedy, and the intricate symmetry of its narrative procedure recalls the visual patterning of illuminated manuscripts such as The Book of Kells. This book invites the reader to enjoy and understand this literary masterpiece, explaining its narrative artistry within its native, classical and biblical literary contexts. Against a historical backdrop of shifting ideologies of Christian kingship, it interprets the saga's possible significance for contemporary audiences as a questioning exploration of the challenges and paradoxes of kingship.

The Destruction of D Derga's Hostel

The Destruction of D Derga's Hostel PDF Author: Whitely Stokes
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 9781468025217
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 98

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Book Description
The vast and interesting epic literature of Ireland has remained, for the most part, inaccessible to English readers until these last sixty years. In 1853, Nicholas O'Kearney published the Irish text and an English translation of "The Battle of Gabra," and since that date the volume of printed texts and English versions has steadily increased. Now there lies open to the ordinary reader a considerable mass of material illustrating the imaginative life of medieval Ireland. Of these Irish epic tales, "The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel" is a specimen of remarkable beauty and power. The primitive aspects of the story are made evident in the way that the plot turns upon the disasters that follow on the violation of taboos, by the monstrous nature of many of the warriors, and by the absence of any attempt to explain the beliefs implied or the marvels related in it. The powers and achievements of the heroes are fantastic and extraordinary beyond description. The natural and extra-natural constantly mingle, yet nowhere does the narrator express surprise. The technical method of the tale, too, is curiously and almost mechanically symmetrical, after the manner of savage art. Both description and narration are marked by a high degree of freshness and vividness.

Epic and Saga - Beowulf Et Al

Epic and Saga - Beowulf Et Al PDF Author: Charles W. Eliot
Publisher: Cosimo, Inc.
ISBN: 1616401737
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 470

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Book Description
Translator names not noted above: Eirikr Magnusson, William Morris, and Whitley Stokes. Originally published between 1909 and 1917 under the name "Harvard Classics," this stupendous 51-volume set-a collection of the greatest writings from literature, philosophy, history, and mythology-was assembled by American academic CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT (1834-1926), Harvard University's longest-serving president. Also known as "Dr. Eliot's Five Foot Shelf," it represented Eliot's belief that a basic liberal education could be gleaned by reading from an anthology of works that could fit on five feet of bookshelf. Volume XLIX features the earliest works of European literature, epic heroic poems of kings and dragon slayers that created the foundations of much of the literature and popular entertainment that came in the centuries after: [ the Old English Beowulf, the best-known work of Anglo-Saxon tradition [ The Song of Roland, the oldest surviving work from medieval France [ The Destruction of D Derga's Hostel, from Old Irish mythology [ The Story of the Volsungs, from the Icelandic sagas [ Niblungs, from Germanic tradition.

Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie

Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Celtic literature
Languages : en
Pages : 612

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Book Description


A List of Books on Modern Ireland in the Public Library of the City of Boston

A List of Books on Modern Ireland in the Public Library of the City of Boston PDF Author: Boston Public Library
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Ireland
Languages : en
Pages : 120

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Book Description


Sotheran's Price Current of Literature

Sotheran's Price Current of Literature PDF Author: Henry Sotheran Ltd
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 532

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Book Description


Selected Writings of John V. Kelleher on Ireland a

Selected Writings of John V. Kelleher on Ireland a PDF Author:
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 9780809389834
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
A collection of eighteen critical essays and twenty-six translations spanning the career of one of the found­ing intellects of Irish Studies, the Selected Writings of John V. Kelleher on Ireland and Irish America consists of five accessible sections. The first gathers Kelleher's essays on the most widely known Irish cultural phe­nomenon--the literary renaissance of the early twentieth century. Part two contains his judicious assessments of Irish literature in its post-Revolutionary phase. The third section includes Kelleher's in­sightful essays on the experience of the Irish in America. The fourth section contains essays that ex­amine early Irish literature and culture, opening with a benchmark essay for Irish Studies, "Early Irish His­tory and Pseudo-History," which was read at the inau­gural meeting of the American Conference for Irish Studies in 1961. The collection concludes with Kelleher's translations and adaptations of poems in Old, Middle, and Modern Irish, illustrating his com­mand of the language at every stage.

Memory and Remembering in Early Irish Literature

Memory and Remembering in Early Irish Literature PDF Author: Sarah Künzler
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110799227
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
Ireland possesses an early and exceptionally rich medieval vernacular tradition in which memory plays a key role. What attitudes to remembering and forgetting are expressed in secular early Irish texts? How do the texts conceptualise the past and what does this conceptualisation tell us about the present and future? Who mediates and validates different versions of the past and how is future remembrance guaranteed? This study approaches such questions through close readings of individual texts. It centres on three major aspects of medieval Irish memory culture: places and landscapes, the provision of information about the past by miraculously old eye-witnesses, and the personal, social and cultural impact of forgetting. The discussions shed light on the relationship between memory and forgetting and explore the connections between the past, present and future. This shows the fascinating spatio-temporal identity constructions in medieval Ireland and links the Irish texts to the broader European world. The monograph makes this rich literary sources available to an interdisciplinary audience and is of interest to both a general medievalist audience and those working in Cultural Memory Studies.

The Story of the Irish Race

The Story of the Irish Race PDF Author: Seumas MacManus
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Ireland
Languages : en
Pages : 762

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Book Description


The Gaelic Background of Old English Poetry before Bede

The Gaelic Background of Old English Poetry before Bede PDF Author: Colin A. Ireland
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 1501513877
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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Book Description
Seventh-century Gaelic law-tracts delineate professional poets (filid) who earned high social status through formal training. These poets cooperated with the Church to create an innovative bilingual intellectual culture in Old Gaelic and Latin. Bede described Anglo-Saxon students who availed themselves of free education in Ireland at this culturally dynamic time. Gaelic scholars called sapientes (“wise ones”) produced texts in Old Gaelic and Latin that demonstrate how Anglo-Saxon students were influenced by contact with Gaelic ecclesiastical and secular scholarship. Seventh-century Northumbria was ruled for over 50 years by Gaelic-speaking kings who could access Gaelic traditions. Gaelic literary traditions provide the closest analogues for Bede’s description of Cædmon’s production of Old English poetry. This ground-breaking study displays the transformations created by the growth of vernacular literatures and bilingual intellectual cultures. Gaelic missionaries and educational opportunities helped shape the Northumbrian “Golden Age”, its manuscripts, hagiography, and writings of Aldhelm and Bede.