Folklore, Literature, and Irish National Culture

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

The ideological character of the 19th century concept of folklore allowed it to transcend the social category of peasants from whom it was largely recorded. This course will look at the role of folklore in the building of an Irish national culture from the time of the Gaelic Revival. Programmatic texts in Irish and in English by Douglas Hyde, first president of the Gaelic League, and by Séamus Delargy, director of the Irish Folklore Commission, will be discussed. It will also look at a later polemical text of the Gaelic writer Máirtín Ó Cadhain directed at what he perceived as the essentialism of Irish folklorists. <b>No knowledge of the Irish language required.</b>