Playing the hero : reading the Irish saga Tain bo Cuailnge / Ann Dooley.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dooley, Ann, 1943-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cú Chúlainn (Legendary character).

Cú Chúlainn.

Táin bó Cúailnge.

Epic literature, Irish--History and criticism.

Epic literature, Irish.

Mythology, Celtic, in literature.

Ireland--In literature.

Ireland.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (309 p.)

Place of Publication:

Toronto ; Buffalo : University of Toronto Press, c2006.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In Playing the Hero, Ann Dooley examines the surviving manuscript versions of the greatest of the early Irish sagas, the Táin Bó Cuailnge (Cattle-Raid of Cooley), and creates a picture of the cultural conditions and literary mind-sets under which medieval scribes recreated the text. Dooley argues that the scribes' work is both a transmission and a translation, and that their own changing historical circumstances within the space of one hundred years, from the beginning to the end of the twelfth century, determines the specifics of their literary creativity.Playing the Hero is a unique example of more contemporary literary methodologies - post-structuralist, feminist, historicist and beyond - being used to illuminate the Irish saga world. Dooley provides a commentary for the saga, helping to re-animate its literary sophistication. Her work is an interrogation of both the Irish epic hero - a reading of the male through the medium of feminine discourse - and the process whereby violence as normalized in the saga genre can be recovered as problematic and troubling. Dooley's work is groundbreaking and will provoke a wide response in Medieval Irish studies.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Reading This Saga

1. Before Writing: Heroic Inscribing

2. Opening the Táin Bó Cúailnge

3. A Scribe and His Táin: The H Interpolations in Táin Bó Cúailnge

4. Epic Writing and Mythic Reading

5. Myth to Epic: The Coming of a God

6. The Invention of Women in the Táin

7. The Sense of an Ending

Epilogue: Their Bodies, Ourselves

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. [277]-293) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

ISBN:

1-4875-2546-X

1-282-02352-7

9786612023521

1-4426-7853-4

OCLC:

288094738