Coire Sois, The Cauldron of Knowledge: A Companion to Early Irish Saga [Hardcover]

Coire Sois, The Cauldron of Knowledge: A Companion to Early Irish Sagaoffers thirty-one previously published essays by Tom?s ? Cathasaigh, which together constitute a magisterial survey of early Irish narrative literature in the vernacular.

? Cathasaigh has been called the father of early Irish literary criticism, with writings among the most influential in the field. He pioneered the analysis of the classic early Irish tales as literary texts, a breakthrough at a time when they were valued mainly as repositories of grammatical forms, historical data, and mythological debris. All four of the Mythological, Ulster, King, and Finn Cycles are represented here in readings of richness, complexity, and sophistication, supported by absolute philological rigor and yet easy for the non-specialist to follow. The book covers key terms, important characters, recurring themes, rhetorical strategies, and the narrative logic of this literature. It also surveys the work of the many others whose explorations were launched by ? Cathasaigh's first encounters with the literature.

As the most authoritative single volume on the essential texts and themes of early Irish saga, this collection will be an indispensable resource for established scholars, and an ideal introduction for newcomers to one of the richest and most under-studied literatures of medieval Europe.

An immense body of narrative lore has come down to us in Irish manu- scripts, and the earliest surviving tales are probably to be dated to the seventh or the early eighth century. Literacy in the vernacular came early to Ireland. We know that there were Christians in Ireland in 431 A.D. for Pope Celestine sent them a bishop in that year. These Irish Christians must have had men among them who were literate in Latin. Some degree of literacy in the Irish language was present even earlier than the fifth century, however: evidence for this is found in the nature of the ogam alphabet. The oldest survivl£'