Gaelic literature 700-1800 (in translation). Study of the prose saga-cycles, satire, classical lyric poetry, and bardic poetry, developing the mythological and traditional background of modern Irish literature.

This course presents a radical approach to the study of ancient Irish literature 700-1800. Students will read the major texts of Irish literature in this period and we will think through the relationship of these texts to modern Irish literature. Students will have two short papers or one long paper, with a midterm and a final. A few short “reading quizzes” will be set. Conventionally read as quaint sidebars to the usual suspects of “Western Civilization” (e.g., the Aeneid, Latin medieval lyrics, etc.), early Ireland’s major texts (including the Táin Bó Cúalnge, the early Irish lyrics, as well as selections from The Conversations of the Ancients {Acallam na Senórach}, The Madness of Sweeney {Buile Suibhne}, along with select exempla from Irish satire and bardic poetry)—all these stand securely on their own against the global background of world literature. At its best the conventional study of these materials shows what is deeply characteristic about ancient Irish literature. But I want our course to ask also about the relation of those early texts to the rich modern Irish literature written in both the colonizer’s language (English) and that of the colonized (Irish-Gaelic). Thus we will set Joyce’s Ulysses beside not only Greek epic (the Odyssey) but also beside the stunningly odd medieval Irish Merugud Ulix Meic Leirtis (Wandering of Ulick Son of Laertes); so too the episodic mode of the Conversations of the Ancients will be set beside modern examples of conversation-driven narrative, e.g., Churchyard Clay finally translated in 2017; early Irish poetry is set beside the rich body of modern and contemporary Irish poetry as represented in Luis de Paor’s recent dynamic collection, Poems of Repossession. Finally, the early Irish world of “satire” (in the Irish sense) and madness (in the general sense) meets its refracting parallel in the work of Flann O’Brien (especially At Swim- Two-Birds). I see this course as providing students with a generous view of the relation of modernity to pre-modernity; I hope also to give an alternative to the conventional presentations of literary material. Books: Thomas Kinsella. Táin. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. 0192803735. Anne Dooley and Harry Roe. The Tales of the Elders of Ireland. Acallam na Senórach. Oxford World’s Classics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. 978-0-19-954985-6. Máirtin Ó Cadhain. Graveyard Clay = Cré na Cille: A Narrative in Ten Interludes.(Tr. Tim Robinson and Liam Mac Con Iomaire.) New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016. 9780300203769. Flann O’Brien. At Swim-Two-Birds. Dublin: Dalkey Archive Press, 13: 1-56478-181-X. -----. The Poor Mouth: a Bad Story about the Hard Life. Dublin: Dalkey Archive Press, 213: 978-1564780911. James Joyce. Ulysses. Edited by Jeri Johnson. Oxford World Classics. New York, Oxford University Press, 2008. ISBN: 9780199535675. Louis de Paor. Poems of Repossession. Leabhar na hAthghabhála. Cork: Bloodaxe Press, 2016. (13: 978-1780372990). Seamus Heaney. Sweeney Astray. A Version from the Irish. New York: Farrar Strauss and Giroux, 2014. ISBN-10: 0374518947 • ISBN-13: 978-0374518943. Course Reader: Available on b-Courses, etc. Supplement: Sweeney's flight : based on the revised text of "Sweeney astray" : with the complete revised text of "Sweeney astray" / Seamus Heaney ; photographs by Rachel Giese. Published London : Faber and Faber, 1992. 9780374272197

Prerequisites: none.

Repeat Rules

Requirements class fulfills