Irish Literary Tradition

with Maxim Fomin

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Week 10:

The decline of the bardic tradition:

Compositions of D. Ó Bruadair, A. Ó Rathaille, E. Ruadh Ó Súilleabháin, and B. Merriman in the context of the eighteenth century Ireland.

With the break of the Gaelic order, it is to be said that a frequent theme in the Irish poetry of the eighteenth century is the lament for the poets’ patrons, dispossessed because of their loyalty to the House of Stuart and who lost their lands in the confiscations of 1693, leaving poets themselves without patrons, a severe blow to “frankly aristocratic” individuals. We will look at the writings of D. Ó Bruadair, A. Ó Rathaille, E. Ruadh Ó Súilleabháin, and B. Merriman, the hallmark of whose poetry is the concern shown to the affairs of the Gaelic (erstwhile) nobility. The eighteenth-century Irish poetry’s material is exclusively the aspirations and nostalgia of a landed or upper class in reduced circumstances. The lament (Modern Irish caoineadh) was the most popular genre among the poets of the eighteenth century Ireland. In the classical age of Gaelic poetry a lament (also called marbhna in Modern Irish) was a stock poem composed by the family poet on the burial of his patron. In the context of the eighteenth century, however, many elegies were composed for aristocrats who were still alive but had been dispossessed of their inheritance.

Select a Week:

Week 1 Introduction go
Week 2Encounters of saints with heroes go
Week 3The Ulster cycle of tales go
Week 4Early Irish native literary tradition go
Week 5Middle Irish satirical wiritngs go
Week 6Middle Irish romances & Fenian lays go
Week 7The penetration of saga material into the folklore tradition go
Week 8Irish historical and pseudo-historical writings go
Week 9The Irish lords on the continent go
Week 10The decline of the bardic tradition go
Week 11Late nineteenth century Irish literary revival go
Week 12Twentieth century Irish literature go