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Introduction To Medieval Irish Literature
AN INTRODUCTION TO MEDIEVAL IRISH LITERATURE
I’m going to point you towards some of the best published accounts of how the body of vernacular medieval Irish literature was produced and has reached us here.
If you read only one thing…
Proinsias Mac Cana, Literature in Irish, Aspects of Ireland / Gneithe dár nDúchas, 8
(Dublin: Department of Foreign Affairs, 1980)
(This is the book that sparked my interest in medieval Irish literature. As well as being a remarkably successful instance of an expert writing for a general audience, it is full of the most beautiful illustrations – many showing how modern Irish art has responded to its medieval literary inheritance).
Some more overviews
James Carney, ‘Language and Literature to 1169’, in A New History of Ireland I: Prehistoric and Early Ireland, ed. by Dáibhí Ó Cróinín (Oxford, 2005), pp. 451-510
Myles Dillon, Early Irish Literature (Chicago, 1948, repr. Dublin, 1994)
Margaret Kelleher and Philip O’Leary, ed., The Cambridge History of Irish Literature, 2 vols (Cambridge, 2006) [see Chapter 1, Tomás Ó Cathasaigh, ‘The literature of medieval Ireland to c. 800’ and Chapter 2, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, ‘The literature of medieval Ireland, 800-1200: from the Vikings to the Normans’ in particular].
Pádraig Ó Riain, ‘Early Irish literature’, in The Celtic Connections, ed. Glanville Price (Gerrard’s Cross, 1992), pp. 65-80
Good places to start …
… for the Ulster cycle
Máire Herbert, ‘The world, the text and the critic of Early Irish heroic narrative’, Text and Context, 3 (1988), 1-8
… for mythological content
Tomás Ó Cathasaigh, ‘Pagan survivals: the evidence of Early Irish narrative’, in Irland
und Europa, die Kirche im Frühmittelalter: Ireland and Europe: the Early Church (Stuttgart, 1984), pp. 291-307
… for saint’s lives
Charles Doherty, ‘The Irish hagiographer: resources, aims, results’, in The Writer as Witness: Literature as Historical Evidence, ed. Tom Dunne (Historical Studies, 16, Cork, 1987), pp. 10-22
Kim McCone, ‘An introduction to Early Irish saints’ Lives’, The Maynooth Review 11 (1984), 26-59
Kim McCone, Pagan Past and Christian Present in Early Irish Literature (Maynoth, 1989)
Collections of translated tales
Jeffrey Gantz, Early Irish Myths and Sagas (Harmondsworth, 1981)
Myles Dillon, The Cycles of the Kings (London, 1946)
Thomas Kinsella, The Táin (Oxford, 1969)
Also useful
Fergus Kelly, A Guide to Early Irish Law (Dublin, 1988), esp. pp. 49, 68-90
Kathleen Hughes and Ann Hamlin, The Modern Traveller to the Medieval Irish Church
I hope to provide maps which correspond precisely to places mentioned in this overview at a later date. For now, have a look at some of the free maps available. Here, for example, is a map showing the major seventh-century monastic sites and the provincial boundaries of the time (http://www.wesleyjohnston.com/users/ireland/maps/historical/map650.gif).
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