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"The Legend of St Brendan" is a study of two accounts of a voyage undertaken by Brendan, a sixth-century Irish saint. The immense popularity of the Latin version encouraged many vernacular translations, including a twelfth-century Anglo-Norman reworking of the narrative which excises much of the devotional material seen in the ninth-century "Navigatio Sancti Brendani abbatis" and changes the emphasis, leaving a recognisably secular narrative. The vernacular version focuses on marvellous imagery and the trials and tribulations of a long sea-voyage. Together the two versions demonstrate a movement away from hagiography towards adventure. Studies of the two versions rarely discuss the elements of the fantastic. Following a summary of authorship, audiences and sources, this comparative study adopts a structural approach to the two versions of the Brendan narrative. It considers what the fantastic imagery achieves and addresses issues raised with respect to theological parallels.
Scholarly interest in theological aspects of Murdoch’s fiction and philosophy took off slowly. It was thirty years after her writing debut that the first work taking detailed notice of the theological language deployed by this overtly-atheist author appeared, and it was a further decade before theologians began to engage with Murdoch’s work together. But it was not until the twenty-first century that this aspect of Murdoch’s thought and imagination began to receive sustained attention. This collection seeks to build on this foundation, begun forty years ago, and to expand the work in this area of Murdoch studies which has lately been gathering momentum. This project consolidates earlier discussion of the vital part theology plays in Murdoch’s thought, and then takes the debate in new directions. Contributors include a wide range of current Murdoch scholars from diverse disciplines who develop debate about this subject in a variety of innovative and fruitful ways, to inspire future works in this area of Murdoch studies.
A new investigation of the saints' cults which flourished in medieval Scotland, fruitfully combining archaeological, historical, and literary perspectives. Of all the Celtic countries, Scotland has lacked the kind of scholarly attention that has been lavished fruitfully on Wales, Ireland, Cornwall and Brittany. And yet of all of them, Scotland offers the widest range of interfaces with broader work on the cult of saints. The papers presented here cover this territory very effectively.... [the book] brings together excellent studies that successfully explore the wide ramifications of the topic. Anyone with aninterest in saints' cults will want this book. DAUVIT BROUN, Professor of Scottish Hi...
Balanced coverage of whole history of Christianity in Wales, paying as much attention to earlier periods as the better-known later ones. A contemporary view of the subject, incorporating the latest scholarly research in an accessible and readable form. Guides to further reading specifically aimed at navigating students and others through what they should read after this book.
This book explores the reception of the medieval Irish tradition of fantastic journey tales in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, C.S. Lewis's The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Umberto Eco's Baudolino, and the science fiction television franchises Star Trek and Stargate. In doing so, the book opens the door to a new history of literary reception, using Old Irish genre categories to analyse post-medieval texts. It aims to show that there is a family of texts produced in the post-medieval period that are heirs of the medieval Irish literary tradition of fantastic voyage narratives and that using Old Irish genre categories to analyse post-medieval works can open up new perspectives in our understanding of these works.
When she died in 2016, Dr Jennifer O’Reilly left behind a body of published and unpublished work in three areas of medieval studies: the iconography of the Gospel Books produced in early medieval Ireland and Anglo-Saxon England; the writings of Bede and his older Irish contemporary, Adomnán of Iona; and the early lives of Thomas Becket. In these three areas she explored the connections between historical texts, artistic images and biblical exegesis. This volume brings together nine studies of the Insular Gospel Books. One of them, on the iconography of the St Gall Gospels (Essay 9), was left completed, but unpublished, on the author’s death. It appears here for the first time. The remaining studies, published between 1987 and 2013, examine certain themes and motifs that inform the Gospel Books: their implicit Christology, their harmonisation of the four Gospel accounts, the depiction of Christ crucified, and the portrayal of St John the Evangelist. Two of the Books, the Durham Gospels and the Gospels of Mael Brigte, receive particular attention. (CS1079).
The saint's cult casts light on relations between Cornwall and Brittany - and Henry II's empire - in the 12th century.