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.

In James Joyce’s novel Ulysses, the young Irishman Stephen Dedalus declares that “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.” Indeed, it is difficult to fully come to terms with Irish Literature without at least a working knowledge of the complex socio-political upheavals that have shaped the island’s fraught history. In the Leabhar Gabhála Éireann, one of Ireland’s earliest extant histories, we find the many invasions of the island traced since its quasi-mythic prehistory: the people of Cessair, Patholón, and subsequently Nemed, the fir bolg, the fairy chieftains of the Tuatha Dé Danann, and at last the Milesian settlers hailing from the Iberian peninsula. Following upon this list, of course, we encounter Viking incursions and eventual settlements in the 9th Century, the Anglo-Norman conquest of the island in the 12th, and later the Plantations of Munster and Ulster under King James I of England, leading eventually to the consolidation of English power in the immediate aftermath of the Irish Rebellion of 1798, led by a coalition of Anglicans, Presbyterians, and Catholics. In this course, we will be exploring Irish Literature through an historical lens, from the early marginal verse of the scribes of Ireland’s monasteries to the Act of Union of 1800, which brought Ireland officially into the United Kingdom. From its earliest poetic texts to the last moments of the Gaelic Order in the 1700s, Irish Literature presents us with a vast wealth of material in a wild diversity of genres. This course will focus on important extant texts of the Ulster and Finn Cycles as well as the lyrical texts of “nature,” praise, and the Bardic Poetry. But we will also explore the full range of early Irish genres from history, genealogy, law, satire, gnomic literature, as well as philology, prosody, medicine, hagiography, etc. not to mention the translations of Greco-Roman epic. In addition to historical contexts, we will also be considering the theoretical orientation of our readings: How does the literature in its early phases exhibit the techniques of oral story-making (so markedly present in the Táin Bó Cualinge)? What theoretical models for analyzing these texts have developed in recent thinking? How have other textual traditions (such as the Greco-Roman or Judeo-Christian traditions) affected the texts themselves and our understandings of what they might mean? Are terms like “lyric” or “epic” useful to us or not? What is the place of early Irish literature in the newly emergent conceptions of “World Literature” or “Early Comparative Literature”? And in what ways, in the waning days of the Gaelic Order, did Irish writers (in both Irish and English) respond to, engage with, attack and collide with one another, and with what consequences? Student work will include a few short response papers, a midterm and final exam, as well as a term paper (due at semester’s end). Required Texts: Carson, Ciarán. The Táin. New York: Penguin Classics, 2008. ISBN: 9780140455304. Dooley, Ann and Harry Roe. Tales of the Elders of Ireland. New York: Oxford UP, 2008. ISBN: 9780199549856. Foster, R. F., ed. The Oxford History of Ireland. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001. ISBN: 9780192802026. Koch, John T. (ed.) with J. Carey. The Celtic Heroic Age: Literary Sources for Ancient Celtic Europe and Early Ireland and Wales. 4th ed. Aberystwyth: Celtic Studies Publications, 2003. ISBN: 1891271091. Ó Conchubhair, Brian and Samuel K. Fisher, ed. Bone and Marrow/Cnámh agus Smior: An Anthology of Irish Poetry from Medieval to Modern. Winston-Salem: Wake Forest UP, 2022. ISBN: 9781943667000 All other texts will be provided in PDF form and made available in our shared course GoogleDrive folder.

Prerequisite: None. Course and readings in English.

Repeat Rules

Requirements class fulfills