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The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel - Kingship and Narrative Artistry in a Mediaeval Irish Saga (Hardcover)
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The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel - Kingship and Narrative Artistry in a Mediaeval Irish Saga (Hardcover)
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Irish saga literature represents the largest collection of
vernacular narrative in existence from the early Middle Ages, using
the tools of Christian literacy to retell myths and legends about
the pagan past. This unique corpus remains marginal to standard
histories of Western literature: its tales are widely read, but
their literary artistry remains a puzzle to many even within Celtic
studies. This book, the first to offer a systematic literary
analysis of any single native Irish tale, aims to show how one
particularly celebrated saga 'works' as a story: the Middle Irish
tale Togail Bruidne Da Derga (The Destruction of Da Derga's
Hostel), which James Carney called 'the finest saga of the early
period'. This epic tale tells how the legendary king Conaire was
raised by a shadowy Otherworld to the kingship of Tara and, after a
fatal error of judgement, was hounded by spectres to an untimely
death at Da Derga's Hostel at the hands of his own foster-brothers.
By turns lyrical and laconic, and rich in native mythological
imagery, the story is told with a dramatic intensity worthy of
Greek tragedy, and the intricate symmetry of its narrative
procedure recalls the visual patterning of illuminated manuscripts
such as The Book of Kells. This book invites the reader to enjoy
and understand this literary masterpiece, explaining its narrative
artistry within its native, classical and biblical literary
contexts. Against a historical backdrop of shifting ideologies of
Christian kingship, it interprets the saga's possible significance
for contemporary audiences as a questioning exploration of the
challenges and paradoxes of kingship.
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