Title Conversing with angels and ancients : literary myths of medieval Ireland / Joseph Falaky Nagy

Published Ithaca, N.Y. : Cornell University Press, 1997

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Description 1 online resource (xi, 356 pages) Series Book collections on Project MUSE Contents Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Rendered Speechless: The Saint in His Own Words -- 2. The Return of the Non-native: Patrick's Mission to Ireland -- 3. The Presence and Absence of Columba -- 4. Necessary Sacrifices: Saints and Their Doubles -- 5. Tracking Down the Past -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Index Summary How does a written literature come into being within an oral culture, and how does such a literature achieve and maintain its authority? Joseph Falaky Nagy addresses those issues in his wide-ranging reading of the medieval literature of Ireland, from the writings of St. Patrick to the epic tales about the warrior Cú Chulainn. These texts, written in both Latin and Irish, constitute an adventurous and productive experiment in staging confrontations between the written and the spoken, the Christian and the pagan. The early Irish literati, primarily clerics living within a monastic milieu, produced literature that included saints' lives, heroic sagas, law tracts, and other genres. They sought to invest their literature with an authority different from that of the traditions from which they borrowed, native and foreign. To achieve this goal, they cast many of their texts as the outcome of momentous dialogues between saints and angelic messengers or remarkable interviews with the dead, who could reveal some insight from the past that needed to be rediscovered by forgetful contemporaries. Conversing with angels and ancients, medieval Irish writers boldly inscribed their visions of the past onto the new Christian order and its literature. Nagy includes portions of the original Latin and Irish texts that are not readily available to scholars, along with full translations Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 331-350) and index Notes Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL Print version record Subject Mythology, Celtic -- Ireland Irish literature -- To 1100. Irish literature -- Middle Irish, 1100-1550. Middle Ages -- Literary collections LITERARY CRITICISM -- Medieval. Irish literature Irish literature -- Middle Irish Middle Ages Mythology, Celtic Gaelic (Iers) Mythologie. Ireland Genre/Form Literary collections Form Electronic book LC no. 97002192 ISBN 9781501729058 1501729055

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