MODULE TITLE:
IrishLiterature in Irish from Cúchulainn to Cathal Ó
Searcaigh
MODULE CODE:
YEAR OF INTRODUCTION/
REVISION:
2010-2011
MODULE LEVEL:
1
CREDIT POINTS:
20
MODULE STATUS:
Compulsory
SEMESTER:
1
LOCATION:
University of the Saarland
E-LEARNING:
Web supplemented
PREREQUISITE(S):
None
CO-REQUISITE(S):
None
MODULE CO-ORDINATOR(S):
Ó Ciardha, É.
Email:
e.ociardha(at)mx.uni-saarland.de
Phone: +49 (0)681-302-70440
Office: C5 3, room 4.10
Lectures
24hrs
Seminars
12hrs
Independent Study
154hrs
TOTAL EFFORT HOURS:
200
ACADEMIC SUBJECT:
Irish Studies
MODULAR SUBJECT:
Irish Studies
RATIONALE
This module will provide a survey of Irish poetry and prose literature in Irish from the
earliest Irish Sagas to the modern period. It will show how literature has been
inescapably allied to historical interpretation and political allegiance. Ireland’s rich
literary tradition, the oldest in Western Europe, has undergone a series of revivals and
collapses, all of them centred on the idea of Ireland. The arrival of Christianity in the fifth
century, and particularly the foundation of new monastic communities in the following
two hundred years, fused a vibrant Romano-Latin culture with Gaelic Ireland’s rich oral
tradition. This vigorous hybrid flowered until the ninth centuries at a time when Irish
Christian missionaries played a key role in converting the Germanic peoples of Europe
to Christianity, earning Ireland its title of ‘The Island of Saints and Scholars’. By this
time, the onset of the Viking invasions, internal dynastic strife and increased
secularisation had begun to weaken Irish monasticism. While a hereditary literary caste
of poets, genealogists, brehons and leeches continued to preserve traditional lore in
relation to places, families, customs and laws, the monastic scribes incorporated it into
established systems of Christian beliefs. They recorded Ireland’s origin myths, preChristian beliefs, deities and place-lore in three cycles; the Ruraíocht, tales of
Cúchulainn, the Irish Achilles, and the Red Branch Knights; Fionn Mac Cumhaill, Oisín
and the Fianna, as well as the King Cycle of Mad Sweeny, The Voyages and the 1 st and
2nd Battles of Maigh Tuiread between the Fir Bolgs, Tuatha De Dannann and the Gaels,
the ultimate victors in the Leabhar Gabála. After the end of the Viking Age and the onset
of the Anglo-Norman invasion in 1169, secular bardic schools began to flourish under
the patronage of Gaelic and Anglo-Norman lords. A hereditary, mandarin class of Irish
poets produced a large corpus of Irish verse, much of which is recorded in family poembooks (dunairí). Up to the late sixteenth century, Gaelic civilization retained a
phenomenal capacity to accommodate to the political and military disruptions which had
characterized the country’s history. However, with the onset of the Protestant
Reformation, the Tudor re-conquest and the arrival of large numbers of English and
later Scottish Protestant settlers, Irish literature would become detached from its socioeconomic and cultural anchorage in the independent Gaelic and Gaelicised AngloNormal lordships. It is only in the seventeenth century that the Gaelic tradition began to
organize itself against this powerful new military, political and cultural aggressor. Many
Irish scholars made their way into the ranks of the counter-Reformation Catholic clergy,
and they effected a Catholic revival through the medium of Irish. This initiative spawned
a whole corpus of theological, historical and annalistic writings designed to reach the
Catholic laity through a literate clergy, thereby preserving them from Protestantism. The
collapse of the Gaelic order proceeded apace during the seventeenth century, as a
consequence of successive wars, conquests, plantations. Its demise effectively
democratised Irish literature and enhanced a vibrant scribal, manuscript and oral
tradition to which revivalists would turn at the end of the nineteenth century. In the
nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries, as the language continued to decline,
the Irish poet, novelist and short-story writer has continued to produce some of the best
writings in either language on the island, as well as fulfilled their time-honoured role as
commentator, reflector and moulder of public opinion in both the Gaeltacht and
Galltacht.
AIMS
Through a series of lectures and seminars the student will be guided towards a
knowledge and appreciation of Irish literature in Irish
The module’s aims are to:
 to read, assess and analyse Irish literature in Irish
 to enable the student to understand and critique Irish literary texts and contexts
LEARNING OUTCOMES
A successful student will be able to show that he/she can:
KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING
K1
Demonstrate a coherent grasp of the major thematic concerns of Irish
Literature
K2
Demonstrate a coherent grasp of its major thematic concerns
K3
Respond critically to selected texts
K4
Demonstrate an awareness of key socio-economic, political and historical
issues
INTELLECTUAL QUALITIES
I1
Critically evaluate evidence, concepts, and arguments based on a wide range
of sources
I2
Reach judgements on the basis of their own evaluation of evidence, ideas and
arguments.
I3
Extract and synthesise key information from written sources
I4
Place literary texts in their cultural, social and historical contexts
I5
Consider and understand abstract ideas
PROFESSIONAL/PRACTICAL SKILLS
P1
Plan and organise tasks
P2
Work carefully, avoiding errors and ensuring accuracy
P3
Carry out independent research and writing projects and present findings
clearly
P4
Demonstrate objective judgement and avoid systematic errors in thinking
TRANSFERABLE SKILLS
T1
Communicate competently and clearly
T2
Produce text documents using a word-processor and search for information
using IT resources
T3
Communicate information and ideas both orally and in writing
T4
Select and read appropriate materials
T5
Demonstrate self reliance, self-discipline, time-management, autonomy,
initiative
CONTENT
The key area of focus for this module will be Irish Literature from earliest times until
the present day. Students will be encouraged to investigate the broader contexts in
which the literature was produced; political currents as well as societal change in
Ireland and Europe over nearly fifteen hundred years. The student will be
encouraged to locate individual literary works within the oeuvre of contemporary
writiers as well as the broader context of literature in a minority language.
Students will be expected to participate in seminar and tutorial work and in
developing short and extended critical essay skills.
TEACHING AND LEARNING METHODS
Tuition in this module will be conducted by means of lecture and seminar and
students are encouraged to ask questions about what is being discussed and to
query matters about which they may feel unsure or which they feel they do not
completely understand or comprehend. It is essential that students read relevant
texts in advance of seminars.
ASSESSMENT
The assessment consists of a 90 minute end-of-semester test, consisting of
approximately a dozen questions, each carrying the same weight and each focusing on
key aspects of early modern Irish History and historiography. Students are expected to
write an essay in response to two questions of their choice.
READING LIST
Required
Bergin, O., Irish Bardic Poetry (Dublin, 1970)
Carson, C., The Táin: Translated from the Old Irish Epic Táin Bó Cúlainge (Dublin,
2007)
Deane, S., A Short History of Irish Literature (Notre Dame, 1986)
Dooley, A. and Roe, H., (ed. and tr.), Tales of the Elders of Ireland (Oxford, 1999)
Kiberd, D., Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation (London, 1999).
Kiberd, D., Irish Classics (London, 2000)
Kiberd, D., 2005. The Irish Writer and the World (Cambridge, 2005)
Kiberd, D. and Fitzmaurice, G. (ed.) An Crann Faoi Bhláth/The Flowering Tree:
Contemporary Irish Poetry with Verse Translations (Wolfhound Press: Dublin 1991)
Ó Tuama, S and Kinsella, T., An Duanaire 1600-1900: Poems of the Dispossessed
(Dublin, 1981)
Recommended
Bartlett T. and Jeffrey, K. (ed), A Military History of Ireland (Cambridge, 1996).
Bolger, D., The Bright Wave: An Tonn Gheal (Raven Press: Dublin 1986)
Bourke, A. et al. eds., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing vols. IV and V: Irish
Women’s Writing and Traditions (Cork, 2002).
Caball, M., Poetry and Politics: Reaction and Continuity in Irish Poetry, 1558-1625
(Cork, 1998)
Campbell, M. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Contemporary Irish Poetry
(Cambridge, 2003)
Canny, N., Making Ireland British, 1580-1650 (Oxford, 2001)
Carroll, C., Circe’s Cup: Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Ireland (Cork, 2001)
Carroll, C. and King, P., Ireland and Post-Colonial Theory (Notre Dame, 2003)
Cleary, J. and Connolly, C. (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Modern Irish Culture
(Cambridge, 2005)
Crowley, T., The Politics of Language in Ireland, 1366-1922 (Cork, 2000)
Cullingford, E.B., Ireland’s Others: Gender and Ethnicity in Irish Literature and Popular
Culture (Cork, 2001)
Deane, S., Strange Country: Modernity and Nationhood in Irish Writing since 1790
(Oxford, 1997)
Deane, S. et al. eds., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, 3 vols (Derry, 1991)
Doan, James & Sewell, Frank eds. On the side of light" : critical essays on the poetry of
Cathal Ó Searcaigh. (Dublin: Arlen House, 2002).
Dorgan, T., Irish Poetry since Kavanagh (Dublin, 1996)
Gantz, Jeffrey, Early Irish Myths and Sagas (Penguin 1981)
Gibbons, L., Gaelic Gothic: Race, Colonization, and Irish Culture (Galway, 2004)
Gibbons, L., Tranformations in Irish Culture (Cork, 1996)
Heaney, S., Preoccupations (Faber and Faber 1980)
Heaney, S., The Government of the Tongue (Faber and Faber 1988)
Hooper, G. and Graham, C. (eds), Irish and Post-Colonial Writing (Eastbourne, 2002)
Hollander, J., Modern Poetry: Essays in Criticism (Oxford University Press 1968)
Hyde, D., A Literary History of Ireland from Earliest Times to the Present Day, repr
(London, 1967)
Innes, C.L., Women and Nation in Irish Literature and Society (Guilford, 1993)
Jackson, A., Ireland, 1798-1998 (Oxford, 1999)
Jackson, K.H., The oldest Irish tradition: A window on the Iron Age, repr. (Cambridge,
1999)
Kinsella, Thomas, The New Oxford Book of Irish verse (Oxford University Press 1986)
Leerssen, J., Mere Irish and Fíor-Ghael. Studies in the Idea of Irish Nationality, its
Development and Literary Expression prior to the Nineteenth Century (Cork, 1997)
Lydon, J., The Making of Ireland: From Ancient times to the Present (London, 1998)
Mac Murchaidh, C. (ed.), Who Needs Irish: Reflections on the Importance of the Irish
Language Today (Dublin, 2004)
McDonagh, John & Newman, Stephen eds., Remembering Michael Hartnett: a
Language Seldom Spoken. (Dublin 2006).
McCone, Kim, Pagan past and Christian present in early Irish literature (Maynooth
1990)
Nagy, J.F., The Wisdom of the Outlaw: the Boyhood Deeds of Fionn in Gaelic Narrative
Tradition (Dublin, 2010)
Ní Dhomhnaill, N., Selected Essays Dublin (New Island, 2005).
Ni Uallachain, P., A Hidden Ulster: People, Songs and Traditions of Oriel (Dublin, 2003)
Ó Buachalla, B., The Crown of Ireland (Galway, 2006)
Ó Ciardha, É., Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, 1685-1766: A fatal attachment (Dublin,
2002, repr. 2004).
Ó Cuív, B., A View of the Irish Language (Dublin, 1969)
Ó Cuív, B., ‘The Irish Language in the Early Modern Period’, in Moody, T.W., Martin,
F.X. and Byrne, F.J. (eds), A New History of Ireland, III, Early Modern Ireland, 15341691 (Oxford, 1968), pp 509-42.
O’Halloran, C., Golden Ages and Barbarous Nations: Antiquarian Debate and Cultural
Politics in Ireland, c.1750-1800 (Cork, 2004)
Sjoestedt, M. L. Gods and Heroes of the Celts. 1949; translated by Myles Dillon repr.
(Berkeley, CA, 1990)
Welch, RA (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Irish Literature (OUP: Oxford 1996)
Welch, RA (ed.), Changing States : Transformations in Modern Irish Writing (London
1993)
Zimmermann, G.D., The Irish Storyteller (Dublin, 2001)
Useful Websites:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/
http://www.irishhistoryonline.ie/
http://www.jacobitestudiestrust.org/activities.html
www.historyireland.com/
http://www.ricorso.net/
http://www.rhs.ac.uk/bibl
http://www.ucc.ie/celt/
IMPORTANT
I would also refer students to an extensive collection of articles, review articles, books
and edited collections in the Clix files for this course, as well as the English subject
library’s reserve reading-room
.