A Divine Vernacular: Old Irish Language and Literary Culture

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

A Divine Vernacular: Old Irish Language and Literary Culture Early Irish sources record that at the Tower of Babel, when faced with the disordered confusion of languages Fénius Farsaid and Goídel Glas deployed a team of scholars to take "what was best of every language and what was widest and finest"; from these choice linguistic elements they made the Irish language, Goídelc, 'Gaelic' or (Mod. Irish) 'Gaeilge'. These origin myths tell us that Irish was created to restore and preserve God's language and heavenly speech, and that eventually it was brought from the Holy Land to Ireland, where Irish linguistic and literary culture flourished. Old Irish was at a very early period used extensively as a language of learning and literature: Irish is Europe's oldest vernacular, or native, literary culture, and Old Irish texts are some of the most diverse and intriguing of the Middle Ages, as we will explore in this course. When the Irish began to create literature in their native language, what ideas, stories and aspects of their culture were they most interested in exploring? Operating in a culture with a vibrant oral, story-telling bardic culture, how did the Irish use their native language to preserve and develop these spoken traditions in writing? In this course participants will divide their time between 1) learning the fundamentals of the Old Irish language (no previous experience necessary!) and 2) studying key texts which give us insight into medieval Irish thinking about the role and importance of language and literary culture. We will examine early heroic sagas, saints' lives, myths about legendary poets and the act of literary creation, stories of pre-Christian women warriors and otherworldly prophets, monstrous human heroes and poems as diverse as those celebrating the natural world, praising God, recording fears about Viking raids and even pondering the difficulty of getting thoughts down on paper. All literary texts will be available in English translation, though as our Old Irish skills develop over the course of the semester, we will also increasingly engage with the texts in their original Old Irish forms. No previous knowledge of Irish (modern or otherwise), or other medieval languages, is necessary for this course. Course requirements will include completion of language exercises, translation of a text of the participant's choosing (creative adaptations as well as linguistically precise translations are possible), a paper on any aspect of medieval Irish literary, linguistic or textual culture, and 1-2 exams. Graduate students will be expected to undertake additional reading, writing and translation.