Heroic saga and classical epic in medieval Ireland
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Heroic saga and classical epic in medieval Ireland
（Studies in Celtic history, 30）
D.S. Brewer, 2011
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. 251-266) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
An examination of the ways in which works of Classical literature influenced and were received by the native Irish tradition.
Original, innovative work which elucidates a number of individual narratives; but more significantly, by placing these texts in their proper intellectual context, the author demonstrates how the world of learning in eleventh- andtwelfth-century Ireland really worked. He illuminates a world of medieval education and scholarship; he tells us (as no-one has done previously) what medieval Irish classicism was all about. Dr Maire ni Mhaonaigh, St John's College, University of Cambridge.
The puzzle of Ireland's role in the preservation of classical learning into the middle ages has always excited scholars, but the evidence from the island's vernacular literature - as opposed to that in Latin - for the study of pagan epic has largely escaped notice. In this book the author breaks new ground by examining the Irish texts alongside the Latin evidence for the study of classical epic in medieval Ireland, surveying the corpus of Irish texts based on histories and poetry from antiquity, in particular Togail Troi, the Irish history of the Fall of Troy. He argues that Irish scholars' study of Virgil and Statius in particularleft a profound imprint on the native heroic literature, especially the Irish prose epic Tain Bo Cuailnge ("The Cattle-Raid of Cooley").
BRENT MILES is a Fellow in Early and Medieval Irish, University College Cork.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Figmenta Poetica and Heroic Saga
Classical Learning in Medieval Ireland: The State of the Question
The Irish Classical Tales: Texts and Sources
Classicism and Togail Troi
Tain Bo Cuailnge and Latin epic
The Rhetorical Set Piece and the Breslech of the Plain of Murthemne
Afterword: An Invitation to Study
Bibliography
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