Bardic close reading

from S. Duffy (ed.) Princes, prelates and Poets in Medieval Ireland: essays in honour of Katherine Simms, 2013

Irish University Review, 2013

This essay reconsiders sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Ireland by queering not only ostensibly heteronormative texts and practices, but social structures writ large. I first outline the intensely homosocial and even homoerotic nature of the bardic institution (including typical poet-patron exchanges and representations as well as the dánta grá or courtly love poetry), employing Sedgwick's concept of ‘male homosocial desire’ so as to situate the bardic response to the challenge of early modern colonial authority. I argue that colonialism queers pre-existing male homosocial bonds, prompting a set of powerful, foundational responses that live on in the Irish imaginary, including, on the one hand, powerful ideological consolidations of domestic homosocial bonds and, on the other, obsessively recording of the perversity of colonial power and acculturation, as well as of an Irish manhood troubled and reconfigured in its wake.

Oral Tradition, 1988

Seanchas Ard Mhacha, 2010

This essay offers new suggestions in the study of sixteenth-and seventeenth-century English and Irish literature through a specifically folkloric lens. While scholars of medieval and modern texts in Ireland have made much progress in uncovering and debating the presence of popular oral traditions (and orality in general) in their respective sources, those who focus on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have yet to fully explore the same attributes in their own rich body of literature. This essay will therefore survey the sources, methods, and directions which a "folkloric turn" can take, especially as it incorporates a range of models that can be used to analyze orality, residues of popular traditions, and the utilization of particular motifs to open a new prism onto the period. While there are certainly challenges in utilizing this approach, folklore has the potential to contextualize and deepen our understanding of sources that include antiquarian records, travel accounts, ballads, legal depositions, English and Irish poetry, and even the modern folkloric tales to which they relate.

Language & Communication, 1989