Apuntes de Literatura Irlandesa (todos los autores) PDF

Preview

Summary

Universidad Complutense de MadridFacultad de FilologíaIRISH LITERATURE NOTESJ. Correoso Fés Vieco M. Goicoechea de Jorge A. López-Varela E. Sánchez-Pardo‣Celtic and Gaelic Ireland Celtic and Gaelic Ireland lasted until 1601-1602 (Battle of Kinsale). Until the early 17th century, Ireland was not poli...

Description

Universidad Complutense de Madrid Facultad de Filología

IRISH LITERATURE NOTES J.M. Correoso F.Cortés Vieco M. Goicoechea de Jorge A. López-Varela E. Sánchez-Pardo

1. Introduction to Ireland and Irish Literature. Origins of Irish Writings. Oral and Written Literature in the Middle Ages Irish Literary Identity and Origins Geography

The British Isles, group of islands off the northwestern coast of Europe. The group consists of two main islands, Great Britain and Ireland. Ireland is, at the same time divided into two nations: the Republic of Ireland (which occupies most of the territory) and Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom, not part of Great Britain.

Traditionally the island of Ireland is divided in four provinces: Ulster, Connacht, Leinster (which holds the capital, Dublin) and Munster. Said provinces are also subdivided into smaller provinces and counties.

We should not forget that the republic of Ireland also includes three small islands: the Aran Islands, situated in the western area of the Republic of Island.

Religious and political partition

Something that hasn't changed across history is that Ireland is primarily a catholic country, although, Northern Ireland has both protestant and catholic population. There is a conflict between the catholic majority and the Protestant minority of the country, due to the fact that Protestant unionists want Ireland to be part of the UK, while Catholic nationalists prefer Ireland to return to the Republic of Ireland.

Catholicism is more than just a religion, it is part of the Irish identity and it’s vital to understand the reality of the country, it has been used inthe past as a tool to oppose to the UK. Historical overview

1

‣Celtic and Gaelic Ireland • Celtic and Gaelic Ireland lasted until 1601-1602 (Battle of Kinsale). Until the early 17th century, Ireland was not politically a nation (as we now understand it), it was a free territory populated with Celtic (and later Gaelic) communities. Those communities were local pagan kingdoms, dominated by local chiefs and laws. • As opposed to Great Britain, Ireland was never conquered nor occupied by the Roman Empire. Christianity arrived in Ireland in the 5th century, notably thanks to the arrival of St. Patrick. And from the 5th century until the 7ths the island will endure numerous raids and unsuccessful invasion attempts by hand of Vikings, pirates, the Normans and the English. This will culminate with the Battle of Kinsale (1601 - 1602) and the subsequent British occupation of Ireland as part of Queen Elizabeth I’s policies of expansionism, giving place to the period named “British” Ireland (from early 17th century to early 20th century). !

‣“British” Ireland • The midst of the 17th century are marked by the repression suffered by the Irish people after the arrival of Oliver Cromwell with the intention of destroying Catholicism within the context of the religious wars that were going one in Europe between Protestants and Catholics. • The Act of Union (1701) formally stablished a political union between Great Britain and Ireland, becoming The United Kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland. • The Irish situation will become particularly difficult in Victorian times (19th century): The Potato Famine that linked at least one third of the Irish population, provoked a emigration towards North America and a rise of Irish nationalism. !

2

• Early 20th century: WWI (1914-18) and the Easter Rising (1916)!

‣Independent Nation: The Republic of Ireland (1922 until today) • Irish War of Independence (1919-1921)!

• Partition of Ireland (1921): Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland (U.K.) ! • Irish Civil War (1922-23)!

- Second half of 20th century

• Tensions between Protestants and Catholics (problem of Northern Ireland) !

• Member state of European Union since 1973

What is Irish Literature? The Irish literary tradition is one of the oldest in Europe (apart from the Italian a the Greek) counting with one 2000 years of oral (in the beginning) and written literature (later on). Until the occupation of Queen Elizabeth I (17th Century), Irish literature was primarily written in Gaelic language. From the 18th century on, English will become the first language in Ireland both spoken and written, other three languages in which the Irish wrote and spoke were Gaelic, Latin and Ulster Scots.

We should not refer to Irish Literature written in English as Commonwealth literature, nor Postcolonial literature but as Anglo-Irish Literature.

There is a dual tradition (hybridity) in Irish literature, this is due to the fact that both the Gaelic and the Anglo forces shape the character a give materials to said literature. It is undeniable

3

that Irish Ann English literatures are closely related and there is a clear drawback to this, which is the absorption of Irish authors and Irish literary texts into the English literary cannon. In response to this, many Irish intellectuals and scholars have reclaimed the need of a Canon of Irish Literature in order to establish a distinction from English Literature.

4

2. Irish Mythology: the Mythological Cycle, Ulster Cycle and Fenian Cycle. Analysis of Irish legend: “Children of Lir" The only way for Irish national artistic self expression is oral literature and this will survive thanks to the uneducated poor Irish people that will transmit to one generation to other stories and legends of Ireland. Most of the stories recall Irish mythology. Irish mythology consists in stories about inventions, great adventures, battles, warriors, but also love stories. Interaction between mortals and Irish Pagan gods. These legends did not die because of oral tradition. What is important to remember is that this Irish mythology inspired some of the best Irish writers that will study later from the 19 and 20th century directly or indirectly. Remember that Irish monks wrote down these tales and stories in manuscripts in latin. These are classified according to the manuscript they belong to.

To understand Irish mythology is necessary to remember the four cycles. Each cycle contains different legends with a particular protagonist.

The first one is the Mythological cycle: it describes the origins of Ireland and the Irish pagan gods. This is the oldest cycle and the consequence of this being the oldest cycle in time is that it's the least preserved of all. We don't have the complete mythological cycle, there are many stories that are missing. It includes the tale that we are reading today .

The second cycle is the Ulster cycle which is associated with the northern part of the island of Ireland. There we find Deidre of the sorrows. The third cycle is the Fenian cycle whose main protagonists are Finn, MacCumhail and Oisín. The fourth cycle is the Historical cycle, this is the least interesting and the most modern one. There is less creativity and literature, is a combination of mythology and history and there is more about the policy of the kingdoms and the Gaelic kings. It's about the politics and the conflicts of the local kingdoms. This cycle we find that poets and storytellers mix history and mythology but there is no balance, there is way more history than creativity.

5

The Children of Lir There are different versions and in these the spelling of the names change. Also, what happens in the story changes as well. Why? because this is one of the oldest and most famous legends of Ireland. This story belongs to the fist cycle.

This legend has all of the elements of a fairytale. The legend is a myth, a fairy tale and can be studied as a fairy tale. In a fairytale we can find happy family life, everything is fantastic, and this family life is going to be destroyed by a villain (a bad character), in this case, the stepmother. This is so typical in fairytales. The distraction of the villain is that she causes the tragedy in the story. In this story, the tragedy is a curse in the children. This is how the supernatural enters the tale. The children of Lir will be punished by their stepmother.

There are different elements that we are going to analyze to understand the story. We know that Lir and his wife have four children: Fingula, Aod and twin brothers Fianchra and Conn. The mother of the children is going to be replaced by her own sister, the stepmother will be their own aunt. The stepmother at first loves them, however, little by little, she starts to get jealous of the children because the father adores the children and the children adore the father back.. Oifa, the stepmother, has magic powers and she puts the children under a spell and they are transformed into four beautiful swans in the lake of the Red Eye. When they are turned into swans, they sing songs to people. They remained in the lake for 400 hundred years and they flew away into the sea of Moyle. This is a sea between Erin and Albain (Erin represents Ireland and Albain represents Scotland).

The swans remain in the sea for 300 years. These will be full of misery. Later, they will spend three more years in the county of Mayo in Erris, and we see how the Irish writer that edited and created the tale wanted to give precise names to geographic places of Ireland so he made sure that we know that this legend is located in Ireland and nowhere else. We know that they stayed for 3 years where they had a miserable life so they later abandon that place to finally go to the isle of Brandan and that happens at the same time when Saint Patrick arrives on the island of Ireland. And, Saint Patrick, as a holy man, he meets the four swans. The swans are going to trust this holy man ( mac howg) and they are going to trust that he can liberate them off of the spell. The story of the four swans reaches the king and the queen of Connacht. The queen knows about the legends and she 6

wants to have the four swans with her. The wife wants them and the monk refuses to send the four swans from the Ireland of Brandan. Therefore the king is angry and he decides to go himself to the island to pick them up. When he arrives and he tries to pick them up, the four swans turn into three old men and one old woman. They are going to be baptized and they are going to die. That is the fate of the four children of Lir.

There are some elements that are important: first, this is a fairytale so we have fairies (supernatural beings). Here, we see the interaction between mortal and supernatural beings. Oifa is the fairy. Fairy are not always good, some people misunderstand the true nature of fairies. Oifa has good qualities but also bad. They can be good and evil at the same time. It is quite well reflected in the true nature of fairies. Also, is the interaction between the Christian religion and the supernatural. Saint Patrick (holy man) and the swans. The arrival of saint Patrick translates into the arrival of Christianity into the isle of Ireland. There is no clear division in the story. The time goes by (upernatural time) and because the swans are out for more than 700 years we have Christian time. So there is a transition between ages of the fairies and ages of the Christianity.

Fairies in the story

Many people believe that when they die, they will become fairies. That’s one belief of many celtic communities. They believed that our ancestors are fairies. They actually believed that the fairies were the descendants of the Tuatha Dé Danann. According to Celtic communities, the tautha de dannann are going to refuge in the Sidhe which is a Celtic war fort. So the ancestors of the fairy are going to be driven away by the invaders and they are going to take refuge into the sidhe. So, that's why very often , the ancestors are given the name of “Daoine sidhe” because they went to sidhe to hide. The sidhe is a place where there is no contact with human beings so this is a small overview of the war of the fairies. So, already we can understand the origin of Oifa as a fairy. But we have to talk about the figure of the swan too. In previous classes, we have talked about the pagan beliefs of the Celtic communities and how they turn surtain animals into gods, but not all animals become gods. Some of them were simply worshipped by people, and swans were one of them. For some Celtic people, swans symbolize fidelity, the purity of the heart and innocence. It was also believed that they can turn into humans and they also believed that swans could travel from this world to the other worlds. This idea of other words was very ambiguous. The same way 7

swans represent fidelity, innocence and the purity of the heart, the four children of Lir are going to represent the same things. The purity of the heart and the innocence is because the four of them trusted their stepmother, they thought she was a good person and they went with her to the lake where they are going to be transformed. But the children of lir do not only symbolize what swans represent for Celtic people, they also represent generosity because as we can imagine, when they become swans they are sad because they are separated from their beloved father but still, they bring happiness to those around them singing beautiful songs. Also, the children of lir represent fraternity, brotherly love, they stay together despite of the adversity they accept the consequences and they stick together.

Do we have a happy ending? Some say that no, because the children of Lir die and they cannot be reunited with their father.

What’s the life lesson from the tale? When you tell a tale to children you want to teach them something: moral values, virtues.. But the main lesson from the tale is that the children of Lir remain kind to each other and kind to others around them although they have been punished and someone has not been kind to them. The lesson is that good overcomes evil in the end.

Do we have a happy ending? We can say that yes, because they remain together, they stick together and at the end, when they die, they are finally reunited with their father in heaven (because this is a religious tale). They remain together as a unity thanks to the family bonds and as they have been baptized, they have faith that they are going to be reunited with their family. Religion is the way to break the course because it is when Saint Patrick (Christianity) comes to Ireland when the children have a chance to be saved from the spell. Religion means salvation. They are baptized because that’s the way they can go to heaven and become pure and innocent. They are going to be blessed by the holy man and they are going to be buried. This catholic ending was added by monks.

We have different versions of this tale where many things are different, however, the ending is always the same. Saint Patrick breaks the spell and they reunite with their beloved father in heaven. We can understand as readers in the 21th century how these Irish monks influenced in a way this oral pagan literature from Celtic communities. They added this happy ending. This is a 8

consolation for Irish people, catholicism has been a consolation for Irish people, maybe not too much in the 21th century but it used to be. The listeners to this tale were uneducated, poor Irish people so this tale helped them with endurance, patience; if you are good to others, others might be good to you and you all will end up in heaven. forgive those who offend you, you are kind, so, definitely, this was a happy ending for Irish people. This tale is very simple but it's wonderful. Pagan values are going to be adapted to christian times.

The Ulster Cycle The Ulster Cycle is the second cycle, also called the Red Branch Cycle. The Ulster cycle it’s about the legends, the stories, and adventures of the heroes and warriors of Ulaid. Ulaid is the ancient kingdom in Ireland in the eastern part of Ulster and the northern part of Leinster. And this cycle is going to be gathered in manuscripts in the early christian periods in Ireland. Even some of the events from the ulster cycle occurred in the times of Jesus Christs. So, because of these facts, we doubt that these stories, heroes or warriors even existed.

The main character of the Ulster cycle is Conchubor, king of Ulaid. We should remember this name because he is going to be present in Deidree of the Sorrows. So, the king of Ulster, Conchubor, succeeded and the previous king Fergus so he is the successor of the previous king. And Conchubor is in constant fights with Maeve, the queen of Connacht, a very powerful queen. And, what it's interesting about king Conchubor? Is that the birth of Conchubor and the death of Conchubor are exactly the same dates as the birth and the death of Jesus Christ. Here is maybe where we can see again the influence of Irish monks and maybe they made a revision of the Ulster cycle. The kind of Ireland that we see in this cycle is that the island is divided into many different kingdoms and also the cycle reflects on the conflicts and wars between the different original kingdoms. What was important for the kings like Conchubor was the wealth and that was measured by the quantity and the quality (fertil) of your cattle and the wars between different kingdoms and lords consisted of two possibilities: two great warriors of each kingdom fighting against each other in a combat face to face. Also, another way for that was cattle raid assaults, this was the typical war between the kingdoms. The most famous story of the Ulster Cycle is “The Cattle Raid of Cooley” (Tain bo Cuailgne in Gaelic) and it’s found in the book of Leinster. Many times, storytellers associated the manuscripts with where they came from. If you are stealing the cattle 9

from another lord or kingdom, it’s a declaration of war because it means an attack against your enemy’s wealth and prosperity.

In this story, the queen of Connacht Maeve and her husband Ailill are going to make a plan because they want to steal the brown stud bull from Ulster because this bull of cooley is the most fertile bull on Ireland so they are jealous of Ulster and its power, for that reason the queen is going to send an army in order to take the animal because she wants to have it for her. She is going to try to take it by force but they are going to meet Cuchulainn (king Conchubor’s seventeen year old nephew). And the army of queen Maeve is going to meet him and fight him with all of her army.

Cuchulainn is going to defeat one after one the whole army of the queen of Connacht. The climax of the story is when a confrontation between Cuchulainn and Fer Díad occurs. The two warriors were friends in the past, Fer was the foster brother of Cuchulainn, however, Fer díad is in exile and he is fighting together with the army of queen Maeve, so now they are enemies. Cuchulainn is going to win the battle again and Fer díad is exhausted and nearly dead, he has multiple wounds but Cuchulainn, after fighting and defeating all of the warriors of Connacht , goes back to Conchubor’s kingdom. However, in the meantime, the brown stud bull has been captured by some man of connacht and when he is in Connacht, there is going to be a fight between him and the white stud bull that was originally there. Connacht had his own bull but it belonged to Ailill, the husband of Maeve and he wanted to prove to her that he was way more powerful than her so it all started with a feud of the marriage : they wanted to see which bull was more powerful and that’s why Maeve sent her army to capture the bull of Conchubor. So, the war between Ulster and Connacth is actually a consequence of a feud between wife and husband.

Finally, in this fight, the brown stud bull of Cooley defeats the white bull of Connacht but because of the fight the brown bull dies because of the battle. This is definitely the most important story of the cycle because we can see that what's important is which kingdom is more powerful and has more wea...