DOCSLIB.ORG

Cursed to the Trees, Enchanted by the Woods: Sweeney Astray

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Cursed to the Trees, Enchanted by the Woods: Sweeney Astray Citation: Herron, T and Pilz, A (2019) Cursed to the Trees, Enchanted by the Woods: Sweeney Astray. Études irlandaises, 44 (1). pp. 87-99. ISSN 0183-973X DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/etudesirlandaises.7136 Link to Leeds Beckett Repository record: https://eprints.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/id/eprint/6892/ Document Version: Article (Published Version) Creative Commons: Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 The aim of the Leeds Beckett Repository is to provide open access to our research, as required by funder policies and permitted by publishers and copyright law. The Leeds Beckett repository holds a wide range of publications, each of which has been checked for copyright and the relevant embargo period has been applied by the Research Services team. We operate on a standard take-down policy. If you are the author or publisher of an output and you would like it removed from the repository, please contact us and we will investigate on a case-by-case basis. Each thesis in the repository has been cleared where necessary by the author for third party copyright. If you would like a thesis to be removed from the repository or believe there is an issue with copyright, please contact us on [email protected] and we will investigate on a case-by-case basis. Études irlandaises 44-1 | 2019 Nature, environnement et écologie politique en Irlande Cursed to the Trees, Enchanted by the Woods: Sweeney Astray Tom Herron and Anna Pilz Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/etudesirlandaises/7136 DOI: 10.4000/etudesirlandaises.7136 ISSN: 2259-8863 Publisher Presses universitaires de Caen Printed version Date of publication: 14 November 2019 Number of pages: 87-99 ISBN: 978-2-84133-945-7 ISSN: 0183-973X Electronic reference Tom Herron and Anna Pilz, « Cursed to the Trees, Enchanted by the Woods: Sweeney Astray », Études irlandaises [Online], 44-1 | 2019, Online since 14 November 2019, connection on 27 November 2019. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/etudesirlandaises/7136 ; DOI : 10.4000/etudesirlandaises.7136 Études irlandaises est mise à disposition selon les termes de la Licence Creative Commons Attribution - Pas d’Utilisation Commerciale - Partage dans les Mêmes Conditions 4.0 International. Cursed to the Trees, Enchanted by the Woods: Sweeney Astray Abstract: Drawing on Jane Bennett’s theory of “crossings and enchantment”, this essay considers interspecies transformations in Seamus Heaney’s Sweeney Astray (1983). As a bird-man, Mad King Sweeney discovers that the arboreal environment is a vibrantly interstitial space in which paganism and Christianity coexist. By negotiating this liminal space, he opens himself to forms of attachment and enchantment that radically ameliorate his accursed existence in the trees. Keywords: Seamus Heaney, Sweeney Astray, arboreal, enchantment, liminality, crossings. Résumé : S’appuyant sur la théorie de « croisements et d’enchantement » de Jane Bennett, cet article traite des transformations inter-espèces dans Sweeney Astray de Seamus Heaney (1983). En tant qu’homme-oiseau, le roi fou Sweeney découvre que l’environnement arboré est un espace interstitiel foisonnant où coexistent paganisme et christianisme. En appréhendant cet espace frontière, il s’ouvre à des formes d’attachement et d’enchantement qui améliorent radicalement son existence maudite au milieu des arbres. Mots clés : Seamus Heaney, Sweeney Astray, environnements arborés, enchantement, liminalité, traversées. Sweeney Astray is the story of Sweeney, a 7th-century king of Ulster who, on hearing that Ronan Finn is marking out a church-site on his territory, assaults the cleric, throws his psalter into a nearby lake, and thus precipitates a series of curses that banish him to a life of madness in the trees 1. Once exiled from his kingdom, Sweeney abides in numerous roosts across the length and breadth of Ireland as a part-human, part-avian figure. Suffering dreadful privations and uttering his poetry of lamentation and praise, he awaits his death “at spear point”, as Ronan’s curse foretells 2. Eventually – and, it has to be said, somewhat uneasily – Sweeney undergoes an amelioration of his woes as he is enfolded by Saint Moling into the care of the very church against which he had once raved so violently. 1. First published by the Field Day Theatre Company in 1983 and then by Faber and Faber in 1984, Seamus Heaney’s version is based largely on James George O’Keeffe’s first full translation into English: Buile Suibhne (The Frenzy of Suibhne): Being the Adventures of Suibhne Geilt, a Middle- Irish Romance, James George O’Keeffe (ed.), London, Irish Texts Society, 1913. 2. Seamus Heaney, Sweeney Astray, London, Faber and Faber, 1984, p. 8. Page references in brackets refer to this edition. Sweeney Astray is sensu stricto a prosimetrum but, for convenience’s sake, we will use the term “poem”. Études irlandaises, no 44-1, 2019 – p. 87-99 88 Tom Herron and Anna Pilz Whilst Ronan’s curse is intended to diminish Sweeney to physical and intel- lectual inferiority – “bird-brain among branches” (p. 7-8) – what occurs is in fact something far beyond anything envisaged by the cleric. Mad Sweeney’s responses to his accursed existence take the form of adventitious becomings and, hence, resonate compellingly with Jane Bennett’s ideas on crossings and enchantment in which, as she puts it, “metamorphing creatures enact the very possibility of change; their presence carries with it the trace of dangerous but also exciting and exhilarating migrations” 3. It is precisely by leaving the stratified social world in which he is king and crossing the threshold into the woods that Sweeney begins an imbrication with the natural world in all its harshness and its pleasures. Sweeney’s knowledge of the manner of his death could well have resulted in terminal disenchantment. Unexpectedly, however, his metamorphosis results in an incomparably rich experience of life in the natural environments of Ireland. While Sweeney flies across the full range of Irish topographies – mountains, glens, bogs, plains, and rivers – it is in certain trees and woods that his becoming- enchanted happens. The woods offer him a liminal environment, simultaneously beyond the social world from which he has been so peremptorily ejected and in some respects in close commerce with that world, in which his physical and mental transformations and privations are sublimated in intense poetic expression. The arboreal world is where things change, where borders and boundaries collapse. It is in and through nature that Sweeney is able to fend off disenchantment. For Sweeney, his “interspecies crossings” awaken within him a fierce “wonder at life” 4. As king of Dal-Arie he would have passed through the forests of his kingdom as hunter on the trail of prey. Of those forays the poem reports no wonder, no sense of enchantment. But as an undefinably-hybrid thing he is fully part of a natural world teeming with species of animal and arboreal life with whom and with which he is in constant commerce. It is via this “interactive fascination” that he escapes the simple binary terms of Ronan’s curse 5. As king he reacted to difference in similarly binary and aggressive ways; as an interspecies he encounters difference with a surprised “feeling of being charmed by the novel and as yet unprocessed encounter” with his new environment and other species 6. We can read Ronan’s curse, therefore, not solely as a punishment but rather, with an eye to Bennett, as bringing into being a “surprising encounter” that leads to Sweeney’s enchantment which, in turn, finds expression in his spare and beautiful poetry 7. For Seamus Heaney, Sweeney is the embodiment of the palimpsestic and at times antithetical character of the landscape. The early Irish landscape was, Heaney 3. Jane Bennett, The Enchantment of Modern Life: Attachments, Crossings, and Ethics, Princeton – Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2001, p. 17. 4. Ibid., p. 13, 32. Jos Smith briefly suggests that Sweeney can be read as an example of Bennett’s “crossings”. See Jos Smith, The New Nature Writing: Rethinking the Literature of Place, New York, Bloomsbury, 2017, p. 71-72. 5. Jane Bennett, The Enchantment of Modern Life…, p. 5. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. Cursed to the Trees, Enchanted by the Woods: Sweeney Astray 89 remarks, “sacramental, instinct with signs implying a system of reality beyond the visible realities” 8. As we will demonstrate, Sweeney, as interspecies, is able to access and give articulation to these invisible realities. Commenting on the development of early Irish nature poetry, Heaney identifies a characteristic tension in the imagination between pagus, “the pagan wilderness […] unrestrained,” and disciplina, “a religious calling that transcends the almost carnal lushness of nature itself” 9. This, he suggests, comes most vividly to the fore in Sweeney’s story as set out in Buile Suibhne: It was the bareness and durability of the writing, its double note of relish and penitence, that first tempted me to try my hand 10. And herein lies the fundamental doubleness of both Sweeney’s story and his voice. Cursed to the trees by Ronan’s bell, Sweeney’s penitential journeying reflects the disciplina. But yet his praise of nature’s richness is an echo of pagus. In his essay “The God in the Tree”, Heaney appears to sense the possibilities of enchantment in nature when he points to two gods in the tree: “the Christian deity” and the “powers of the Celtic otherworld” 11. Bennett offers a “quasi-pagan model of enchantment” that seeks to offer an alternative to the “powerful and versatile Western tradition […] that make[s] enchantment depend on a divine creator” 12. Figured initially as landscapes that, in their apparent desolation, are fittingly punitive for a frenzied king in disgrace, the woods shift in the course of the poem to realms that are, despite their harshness, full of beauty and wonder.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Genre and Identity in British and Irish National Histories, 1541-1691
    “NO ROOM IN HISTORY”: GENRE AND IDENTIY IN BRITISH AND IRISH NATIONAL HISTORIES, 1541-1691 A dissertation presented by Sarah Elizabeth Connell to The Department of English In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the field of English Northeastern University Boston, Massachusetts April 2014 1 “NO ROOM IN HISTORY”: GENRE AND IDENTIY IN BRITISH AND IRISH NATIONAL HISTORIES, 1541-1691 by Sarah Elizabeth Connell ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in the College of Social Sciences and Humanities of Northeastern University April 2014 2 ABSTRACT In this project, I build on the scholarship that has challenged the historiographic revolution model to question the valorization of the early modern humanist narrative history’s sophistication and historiographic advancement in direct relation to its concerted efforts to shed the purportedly pious, credulous, and naïve materials and methods of medieval history. As I demonstrate, the methodologies available to early modern historians, many of which were developed by medieval chroniclers, were extraordinary flexible, able to meet a large number of scholarly and political needs. I argue that many early modern historians worked with medieval texts and genres not because they had yet to learn more sophisticated models for representing the past, but rather because one of the most effective ways that these writers dealt with the political and religious exigencies of their times was by adapting the practices, genres, and materials of medieval history. I demonstrate that the early modern national history was capable of supporting multiple genres and reading modes; in fact, many of these histories reflect their authors’ conviction that authentic past narratives required genres with varying levels of facticity.
    [Show full text]
  • Irish Landscape Names
    Irish Landscape Names Preface to 2010 edition Stradbally on its own denotes a parish and village); there is usually no equivalent word in the Irish form, such as sliabh or cnoc; and the Ordnance The following document is extracted from the database used to prepare the list Survey forms have not gained currency locally or amongst hill-walkers. The of peaks included on the „Summits‟ section and other sections at second group of exceptions concerns hills for which there was substantial www.mountainviews.ie The document comprises the name data and key evidence from alternative authoritative sources for a name other than the one geographical data for each peak listed on the website as of May 2010, with shown on OS maps, e.g. Croaghonagh / Cruach Eoghanach in Co. Donegal, some minor changes and omissions. The geographical data on the website is marked on the Discovery map as Barnesmore, or Slievetrue in Co. Antrim, more comprehensive. marked on the Discoverer map as Carn Hill. In some of these cases, the evidence for overriding the map forms comes from other Ordnance Survey The data was collated over a number of years by a team of volunteer sources, such as the Ordnance Survey Memoirs. It should be emphasised that contributors to the website. The list in use started with the 2000ft list of Rev. these exceptions represent only a very small percentage of the names listed Vandeleur (1950s), the 600m list based on this by Joss Lynam (1970s) and the and that the forms used by the Placenames Branch and/or OSI/OSNI are 400 and 500m lists of Michael Dewey and Myrddyn Phillips.
    [Show full text]
  • "The Given Note": Traditional Music and Modern Irish Poetry
    Provided by the author(s) and NUI Galway in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite the published version when available. Title "The Given Note": traditional music and modern Irish poetry Author(s) Crosson, Seán Publication Date 2008 Publication Crosson, Seán. (2008). "The Given Note": Traditional Music Information and Modern Irish Poetry, by Seán Crosson. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Publisher Cambridge Scholars Publishing Link to publisher's http://www.cambridgescholars.com/the-given-note-25 version Item record http://hdl.handle.net/10379/6060 Downloaded 2021-09-26T13:34:31Z Some rights reserved. For more information, please see the item record link above. "The Given Note" "The Given Note": Traditional Music and Modern Irish Poetry By Seán Crosson Cambridge Scholars Publishing "The Given Note": Traditional Music and Modern Irish Poetry, by Seán Crosson This book first published 2008 by Cambridge Scholars Publishing 15 Angerton Gardens, Newcastle, NE5 2JA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2008 by Seán Crosson All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-84718-569-X, ISBN (13): 9781847185693 Do m’Athair agus mo Mháthair TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements .................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Zcp64 2017-08-14 Rez-Carey-Fomin
    Besprechungen 1 Besprechungen Carey, John (ed.): Buile Suibhne: Perspectives and reassessments. Lon- don/Dublin: Irish Texts Society, Subsidiary Series 26, 2014. xiii, 232 S., ISBN 978-0-95756-612-5. € 21. The medieval Irish saga Buile Shuibhne (‘The Frenzy of Suibhne’, hereinafter BS) has attracted scholars’ attention for over a hundred years. Since thefirst publication of the tale for the Irish Texts Society by J. O’Keeffe in 1913 (reprinted in 1996 with a new introduction by J.F. Nagy), the tale has been subjected to intensive inquiry by Jackson (1940, 1953), Chadwick (1942), Lehmann (1953–4, 1955), Carney (1955), Ó Riain (1974), and more recently, Mac Mathúna (1981), Nagy (1982-3), Carey (1984), Frykenberg (1984), Pehnt (1999), Mikhailova (1999), Slavin (2006), Bergholm (2012) and many others. The volume under review is different from the similar collections published in the Irish Texts Society Subsidiary Series. Firstly, it has been dedicated to the memory of Seamus Heaney, whose untimely departure prevented him from speaking about his own translation of Buile Shuibhne from the Irish language (Heaney 1983). Secondly, “one radical reinterpretation of the figure of the geilt” (p. xii) by Ó Riain (1972), was republished here – “the first time that a volume in this series has thus returned earlier material to print” (ibid.). The first and foremost aspect of the study of any medieval Irish text isthe question of its dating. This problem is the focus of the paper by MáirínNí Dhonnchadha, ‘The Cult of St Moling and the Making of Buile Shuibhne’ (pp. 1– 42), who proposes, in her own words, “a new theory on the making of Buile Shuibhne” (p.
    [Show full text]
  • The Rough Field Sect. IV: “A Severed Head” [Poem 5]
    “Taking Flight: Landscape and Imagination in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney” An Ulster farmhouse The Common Blackbird (Turdus merula) The Gaelic League was est- ablished in 1893 to preserve the Irish language. Following his Nobel Prize Award in 1995, Ancient Irish passage- Heaney drove a Mercedes-Benz which he called his “brazen car” in a comicall grave with its corballed allusion to Yeats’s poem about the roof. (Boyne) Mad Sweeney ancient Irish king Fergus who “rules the at Drumcolg brazen cars ...”. The model is a favourite of wealthy Irish farmers. Irish Signposts (bilingual nation) Ireland: one country – two cultures? • The great majority of people in Ireland only spoke Irish up to the mid-19th century. • The “English conquest” of Ireland in 1172 was carried out by Anglo-French Normans. • English began to be imposed by law in Ireland after the Protestant Reformation. •Under colonial rule, Irish became a “badge of inferiority” connoting poverty and ignorance. • After the Great Famine (1845-49), the Irish rapidly shifted to English spurred by economic necessity and the faltering prestige of Irish. • In 1893, a the Gaelic League (Conradh na Gaeilge) was formed to revive the Irish language. • In 1913 the League became officially identified with the aim of national independence. • In 1922 Irish was politically endorsed as the language of the Free State and later the Republic of Ireland (declared in 1948). • In 1984 Irish ceased to be a compulsory in the Irish School Leaving Certificate Exam; in the 1990s it ceased to be compulsory for Civil Service posts either. •In 2003 the Irish Language Act confirmed that all Government documents must be published in both languages – the Irish version being the primary one for legal purposes.
    [Show full text]
  • Studia Celtica Fennica No. XIV 2017
    Studia Celtica Fennica No. XIV 2017 STUDIA CELTICA FENNICA XIV 2017 CONTENTS Esipuhe | Editorial 5 Phillip A. Bernhardt-House Binding the Wolf, Leashing the Hound: Canid Eschatologies in Irish and Norse Myth 7 George Broderick The Last Native Manx Gaelic Speakers. The Final Phase: ‘Full’ or ‘Terminal’ in speech?* 18 John R. Collis Celts Ancient and Modern: Recent Controversies in Celtic Studies 58 Grigory Grigoryev Bachal Ísu: the Symbolism of St. Patrick’s Crosier in Early-Medieval Irish Hagiography 71 Mikhail Kiselev Some Notes on the Origin of the Motif of the Ulaid’s False Beards in Cáth Áenaig Macha and Cóir Anmann 85 Ksenia Kudenko Tochmarc Moméra as Echtra to the Otherworld 92 Eugene McKendry Celtic Languages in Education in the United Kingdom’s Devolved Jurisdictions of Northern Ireland, Wales, and Scotland 111 Kevin Murray H and the First Recension of the Táin 127 Joseph Falaky Nagy The Pride of Heroes and the Problems of Readers of Medieval Celtic Literature 139 Tomás Ó Cathasaigh The Ulster Exiles and Thematic Symmetry in Recension I of Táin Bó Cúailnge 154 Jouna Pyysalo A Minor Sound Law for Celtic: PIE *VNHK → OIr. Vcc: OCymr. Vnc 170 KIRJA-ARVOSTELUJA – BOOK REVIEWS 183 Esipuhe Tämän Studia Celtica Fennican numeron artikkelit perustuvat Helsingissä 24.- 26.8.2016 järjestetyssä XV International Symposium of Societas Celtologica Nordica –symposiumissa pidettyihin esitelmiin. Symposiumi juhlisti Suomen Keltologisen Seuran 25-vuotista taivalta ja siihen osallistui noin 50 tutkijaa Suomesta, Ruotsista, Norjasta, Venäjältä, Irlannista, Skotlannista, Englannista, Pohjois-Irlannista, Yhdysvalloista, Belgiasta, Itävallasta ja Sveitsistä. Kolmen päivän aikana pidettiin 28 esitelmää ja lisäksi saimme nauttia kuudesta keynote- esitelmästä, jotka pitivät Máire Herbert, John Carey, Robin Chapman Stacey, Tomás Ó Cathasaigh, Jan Erik Rekdal ja Joseph Nagy.
    [Show full text]
  • Appendixes Appendix A
    APPENDIXES APPENDIX A Yeats's Notes in The Collected Poems, 1933 The Spelling of Gaelic Names In this edition of my poems I have adopted Lady Gregory's spelling of Gaelic names, with, I think, two exceptions. The 'd' of 'Edain' ran too well in my verse for me to adopt her perhaps more correct 'Etain,' and for some reason unknown to me I have always preferred 'Aengus' to her 'Angus.' In her Gods and Fighting Men and Cuchulain of Muirthemne she went as close to the Gaelic spelling as she could without making the names unpro­ nounceable to the average reader.'-1933. Crossways. The Rose (pages 3, 25) Many of the poems in Crossways, certainly those upon Indian subjects or upon shepherds and fauns, must have been written before I was twenty, for from the moment when I began The Wanderings of Oisin, which I did at that age, I believe, my subject-matter became Irish. Every time I have reprinted them I have considered the leaving out of most, and then remem­ bered an old school friend who has some of them by heart, for no better reason, as I think, than that they remind him of his own youth.' The little Indian dramatic scene was meant to be the first scene of a play about a man loved by two women, who had the one soul between them, the one woman waking when the other slept, and knowing but daylight as the other only night. It came into my head when I saw a man at Rosses Point carrying two salmon.
    [Show full text]
  • Food As 'Motif' in the Irish Song Tradition
    Food as ‘Motif’ in the Irish Song Tradition Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire, Dublin Institute of Technology The beef and the beer of the Saxon may build up good, strong hefty men; The Scot goes for haggis and porridge and likes a ‘wee drap’ now and then; The German may spice up a sausage that’s fit for great Kaisers and Queens, But the Irishman’s dish is my darling – a flitch of boiled bacon and greens. They laughed at the pig in the kitchen when Ireland lay groaning in chains, But the pig paid the rent, so no wonder our ‘smack’ for his breed still remains, And what has a taste so delicious as ‘griskins’ and juicy ‘crubeens’, And what gives health, strength and beauty like bacon, potatoes and greens? Background The above song ‘Bacon and Greens’ was written by Con O’Brien and first appeared in print in September 1930 in the Cork Weekly Examiner. This Irish love affair with pig meat was still evident in Pat Short’s chart topping 2006 song ‘The Jumbo Breakfast Roll’ which describes the Celtic Tiger phenomenon of wrapping the components of the cooked Irish breakfast in a half baguette for consumption by cash-rich, time-poor citizens. These same ingredients (bacon, sausages, black pudding etc.) form part of the popular all-day Irish meal known as a ‘mixed grill’ described so evocatively in the writings John McGahern (Maher 2014). Considering the primacy of food in people’s lives generally throughout history, it is logical that food be reflected in their songs and poetry.
    [Show full text]
  • The Political Commitment in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney
    THE UNIVERSITY OF HULL "PROTECTIVE COLOURING" - THE POLITICAL COMMITMENT IN THE POETRY OF SEAMUS HEANEY BEING A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF HULL BY ALAIN THOMAS YVON SINNER, BA APRIL 1988 PREFACE I came to Heaney's poetry through FIELD WORK, which I read for a seminar on contemporary British poetry when I was studying English at the University of Hull. At the time I knew nothing whatsoever about post-Yeatsian Irish poetry and so I was agreeably surprised by the quality of Heaney's work. Initially, it was not so much the contents of his poems, but the rhythms, the sound patterns, the physical immediacy of his poetry which I admired most. Accordingly, I concentrated on Heaney's nature and love poems. His political verse requires the reader to be more or less well informed about what was and still is going on in Northern Ireland and it was only gradually that I acquired such knowledge. After FIELD WORK, I read the SELECTED POEMS 1965-1975 and they became a kind of journey through the diverse aspects of Heaney's multi-faceted work. In the course of six years' research on Heaney I have come to study other poets from Ulster as well and, though I still feel that Heaney is the most promising talent, it seems to me that Ireland is once again making a considerable contribution to English literature. Heaney is definitely on his way to becoming a major poet. The relevance of his work is not limited to the Irish context; he has something to say to ENGLISH ' ********************************************************* 1 1 A1-1-i 1988 Summary of Thesis submitted for PhD degree by Alain T.Y.
    [Show full text]
  • The Worlding of Irish Studies
    Wednesday American Irish-Argentines at a gathering in Venado Tuerto, c. 1920. (Roberto Landaburu Collection) Conference for Irish Studies The Worlding of Irish Studies Hosted by March 30 - April 3, 2016 University of Notre Dame acis.nd.edu 1 WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY SUNDAY march 30 march 31 april 1 april 2 april 3 9:00 a.m. 9:30 a.m. 9:00am–10:30am: 9:00am–10:30am: 9:00am–10:30am: 9:00am–10:30am: 10:00 a.m. PANEL 3 PANEL 6 PANEL 9 PANEL 12 10:30 a.m. 10:30am–11:00am: 10:30am–11:00am: 10:30am–11:00am: BREAK BREAK BREAK 11:00 a.m. 10:30am–12:00pm: 11:00am–12:30pm: 11:00am–12:30pm: 11:30 a.m. 11:00am–12:30pm: ANEL KEYNOTE KEYNOTE P 13 MARY E. DALY THOMAS BARTLETT 12:00 p.m. PANEL 7 McKenna Hall McKenna Hall 12:30 p.m. 12:00pm: REGISTRATION OPENS 12:30pm–2:00pm: 1:00 p.m. GRADUATE STUDENT 12:30pm–2:00pm: 12:30pm–2:00pm: LUNCH ACIS BUSINESS LUNCH 1:30 p.m. 1:00pm–2:30pm: EXECUTIVE COUNCIL LUNCH ON YOUR OWN LUNCH 2:00 p.m. PANEL 1 2:30 p.m. 2:00pm–3:30pm: 2:00pm–3:30pm: 2:00pm–3:30pm: 2:30pm–3:00pm REAK 3:00 p.m. B PANEL 4 PANEL 8 PANEL 10 3:30 p.m. 3:00pm–4:30pm: 3:30pm–4:00pm: 3:30pm–4:00pm: 3:30pm–4:00pm: BREAK BREAK BREAK 4:00 p.m.
    [Show full text]
  • Irish Literature Between Nationalism and Modernism. (2017) Directed by Dr
    BALDWIN, KARA, Ph.D. Democratic Experiments: Irish Literature between Nationalism and Modernism. (2017) Directed by Dr. Ben Clarke. 201 pp. The purpose of this research is to examine how Irish literature acts democratically to represent individuals in relation to each other, the nation, and the British Empire. As Ireland’s political system shifted from colony to commonwealth to independent republic, literature helped shape national identity and individual agency. By analyzing literary contributions in Ireland throughout its political transformation, this dissertation reveals the progress and limitations of political and literary attempts to write agency. In its study of agency and concepts of representation, this analysis relies on theoretical concepts developed in postcolonial and cultural studies, specifically those developed by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Jacque Rancière. Their explanations of representation and the demos are placed into conversation with texts that take part in developing identity and agency in Irish literature, including works of the Celtic Revival, James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Flann O’Brien’s At Swim- Two-Birds. Each of these literary texts is examined to identity how they take part in creating – and limiting – democratic agency. While great strides are made in furthering democratic agency by each of these literary texts, this research reveals that individual agency in relation to the nation is complicated. Even so, Flann O’Brien’s novel provides an alternative concept of how democratic agency for individuals can happen in relation to each other and how politics can learn from the dissonance of democratic voices. DEMOCRATIC EXPERIMENTS: IRISH LITERATURE BETWEEN NATIONALISM AND MODERNISM by Kara Baldwin A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of The Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Greensboro 2017 Approved by _______________________ Committee Chair To my mom, whose Irish eyes are always smiling.
    [Show full text]
  • The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry
    THE PENGUIN BOOK OF IRISH POETRY Edited by PATRICK CROTTY with a Preface by SEAMUS HEANEY PENGUIN CLASSICS an imprint of PENGUIN BOOKS Contents Preface xliii Introduction xlvii I WRITING OUT OF DOORS: EARLIEST TIMES TO 1200 THE ARRIVAL OF CHRISTIANITY ANONYMOUS Adze-head 3 I Invoke the Seven Daughters 3 The Deer's Cry 5 from The Calendar of Oengus The Downfall of Heathendom 8 Patrick's Blessing on Munster 9 Writing Out of Doors 10 MONASTICISM ANONYMOUS The Hermit's Song (Marban to Guaire) 11 The Priest Rediscovers His Psalm-Book 13 Straying Thoughts 14 Myself and Pangur 16 . : Celibacy 17 EARL ROGNVALD OF ORKNEY (d.1158) Irish Monks on a Rocky Island 18 vu CONTENTS DEVOTIONAL POEMS ANONYMOUS Eve 19 The Massacre of the Innocents 20 BLATHMAC, SON OF CU BRETTAN (fl. 750) from To Mary and Her Son 'May I have from you my three petitions .. .' 22 ANONYMOUS from The Metrical Translation of the Gospel of St Thomas Jesus and the Sparrows 23 St Ite's Song 25 St Brigit's Housewarming 26 CORMAC, KING BISHOP OF CASHEL (837-903) The Heavenly Pilot 27 POEMS RELATING TO COLUM CILLE (COLUMBA) DALLAN FORGAILL (J.598) . from Amra Colm Cille (Lament for Colum Cille) I: 'Not newsless is Niall's land ...' 28 II: 'By the grace of God Colum rose to exalted companionship .. .' 29 V: 'He ran the course which runs past hatred to right action . .' 29 COLUM CILLE (attrib.) The Maker on High 30 Colum Cille's Exile 34 He Sets His Back on Ireland 3 6 He Remembers Derry 3 6 'My hand is weary with writing' 3 6 BECCAN THE HERMIT (d.677) Last Verses in Praise of Colum Cille 3 7 via CONTENTS EPIGRAMS ANONYMOUS The Blackbird of Belfast Lough 40 Bee 40 Parsimony 41 An 111 Wind 41 The King of Connacht 41 Sunset 41 'He is my love' 42 ORLD AND OTHERWORLD ANONYMOUS Storm at Sea 43 Summer Has Come 44 Gaze North-East 45 Winter 46 World Gone Wrong 47 from The Voyage of Bran, Son of Febal, to the Land of the Living The Sea-God's Address to Bran 48 The Voyage of Maeldune 5° from The Vision of Mac Conglinne 'A vision that appeared to me .
    [Show full text]