Mark Williams
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199571840
- eISBN:
- 9780191594434
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199571840.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature, Mythology and Folklore
The presentation of the magical and mantic in Celtic literature has persistently been dogged by misunderstanding and over-romanticised readings. Among the misconceptions about the ...
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The presentation of the magical and mantic in Celtic literature has persistently been dogged by misunderstanding and over-romanticised readings. Among the misconceptions about the ancient and medieval Celtic peoples, the notion of a specifically ‘Celtic’ astrology remains widespread in the popular mind. This study aims to counter such myth-making, and to demonstrate how a number Irish and Welsh literary writers in the medieval and Early Modern period conceived of portents in the heavens — comets, blood-coloured moons, darkened suns — and what they knew of the complex art of astrology. The book examines the dissemination of concepts of portents and the science of the stars on the Celtic fringe from a literary perspective. A central concern is to provide an examination of the classes of people represented as expert in the interpretation of celestial portents: the early Irish annal-writer, the literary druid, the seer, the mythical prophet Merlin, and the learned Welsh poet of the late Middle Ages and beyond.
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The presentation of the magical and mantic in Celtic literature has persistently been dogged by misunderstanding and over-romanticised readings. Among the misconceptions about the ancient and medieval Celtic peoples, the notion of a specifically ‘Celtic’ astrology remains widespread in the popular mind. This study aims to counter such myth-making, and to demonstrate how a number Irish and Welsh literary writers in the medieval and Early Modern period conceived of portents in the heavens — comets, blood-coloured moons, darkened suns — and what they knew of the complex art of astrology. The book examines the dissemination of concepts of portents and the science of the stars on the Celtic fringe from a literary perspective. A central concern is to provide an examination of the classes of people represented as expert in the interpretation of celestial portents: the early Irish annal-writer, the literary druid, the seer, the mythical prophet Merlin, and the learned Welsh poet of the late Middle Ages and beyond.
Heather O'Donoghue
- Published in print:
- 1991
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198117834
- eISBN:
- 9780191671074
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198117834.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature, Mythology and Folklore
The origins of many of the Icelandic sagas have long been the subject of critical speculation and controversy. This book demonstrates that an investigation into the relationship between ...
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The origins of many of the Icelandic sagas have long been the subject of critical speculation and controversy. This book demonstrates that an investigation into the relationship between verse and prose in saga narrative can be used to reconstruct how Icelandic sagas were composed; to this end it provides a detailed analysis of the Kormáks saga, whose hero Kormákr is one of the most celebrated of Icelandic poets. Over 60 of his passionate, cryptic skaldic stanzas are quoted in the saga, and the way they and the saga prose are fitted together reveals that the Kormáks saga, far from being a seamless narrative of either pre-Christian oral tradition or later medieval fiction, is in fact a patchwork of different kinds of literary materials. This book offers a way of understanding not only the compositional method and distinctive aesthetic qualities of the Kormáks saga, but also the genesis of many other Icelandic saga narratives.
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The origins of many of the Icelandic sagas have long been the subject of critical speculation and controversy. This book demonstrates that an investigation into the relationship between verse and prose in saga narrative can be used to reconstruct how Icelandic sagas were composed; to this end it provides a detailed analysis of the Kormáks saga, whose hero Kormákr is one of the most celebrated of Icelandic poets. Over 60 of his passionate, cryptic skaldic stanzas are quoted in the saga, and the way they and the saga prose are fitted together reveals that the Kormáks saga, far from being a seamless narrative of either pre-Christian oral tradition or later medieval fiction, is in fact a patchwork of different kinds of literary materials. This book offers a way of understanding not only the compositional method and distinctive aesthetic qualities of the Kormáks saga, but also the genesis of many other Icelandic saga narratives.
