Great Irish Writers I

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Ireland produced one of the most unique, extensive, and oldest literatures in Europe. In this class we look at a wide range of stories -- saints' lives, political poetry, myth and legend, heroic epic, lament, and placelore -- from ca. 800-1800 C.E. We learn about the changing religious, political, cultural and intellectual contexts to which these Irish women and men responded with their powerful compositions. We ask: what did Irish writers record about their conversion from paganism to Christianity? How did they use Gaelic poetry to protest invasion and English colonization? How did texts created by and about remarkable women like St. Brigit, the warrior-queen Medb, and the keening poet Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, address issues of gender and power in a heavily patriarchal Ireland? In this class we think about the transformative potential of words, and ask the question: what is literature, and how do we recognize and appreciate it? What defines Irish literature, and what has made it so politically and culturally dynamic? By looking at authors ranging from saints and scholars to dispossessed poets and grieving women, we examine the voices from Ireland's past that still speak to us today.