Classical Antiquity and Medieval Ireland

This open-access book fills a huge gap in the study of classical reception in Irish literature by making accessible in translation selections from a wide variety of 10th-15th century texts. These texts are important because they demonstrate Ireland's indigenous and pre-colonial expertise in classical learning. Ireland thus emerges as a unique case in postcolonial terms where classical education is normally assumed to derive from a British imperial model.

The collection situates the antiquity sagas into a broader framework of Irish, Scandinavian, and international medieval literatures. The first section of the book correlates historical Irish and world chronologies with those of ancient Greece and Rome (including texts such as the first fragment of the Annals of Tigernach). The second and third sections focus on the reception of Homer and Latin epics (including such texts as Togail Troí, Imtheachta Aeniasa and In Cath Catharda). The fourth section looks at pseudo-histories with texts such as Merugud Uilix and Scéla Alaxandair. Finally the sixth section explores histories and books of scholarly knowledge (including texts such as Dindshenchas and Auraicept na nÉces). Together these extracts posit thematic analogies between Irish and Graeco-Roman traditions across genre, historiography, linguistics and mythography, showcasing the marked influence of classical concepts and tropes.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the European Research Council.