Classical Antiquity and Medieval Ireland: An Anthology of Medieval Irish Texts and Interpretations

Through an extensive series of extracts and accompanying interpretative and contextual essays, this open access volumeshowcases the expertise in classical learning that flourished in medieval Gaelic Ireland. Providing translations of all excerpts, it situates better known ’antiquity sagas’ in the Middle Irish language, such as Togail Troí(The Siege of Troy, based on Dares Phrygius), Imtheachta Aeniasa (The Wanderings of Aeneas, based on Virgil’s Aeneid), In Cath Catharda(The Civil War, based on Lucan) and Togail na Tebe(The Siege of Thebes, based on Statius), within the broader constellation of medieval Irish literature that references and engages with classical antiquity.

Included are synchronistic poetry and world chronologies; lesser-known Irish poetry and prose recounting episodes from Graeco-Roman mythography and featuring, for instance, Jason and the Argonauts, Ulysses and Penelope, Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, Daedalus and the Minotaur; linguistic and metaphysical tracts; place-name lore; and medieval historiographies of Alexander the Great, Hercules, and warriors of Irish legend recast as classical heroes. Creating access to this body of texts and revealing the marked influences of classical concepts on the imaginative resources of medieval Ireland fills a conspicuous lacuna in our knowledge of classical reception in European literatures.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the European Research Council, grant no. 818366.

Michael Clarke is Established Professor of Classics at the University of Galway, Ireland.

Erich Poppe is the former Professor of Celtic Studies at the University of Marburg, Germany.

Isabelle Torrance is Professor of Classical Reception and Director of the Centre for Irish Studies at Aarhus University, Denmark.