Celtic Studies Commons^™

Téacsúil Fionnachtain, Alan Delozier

Critical Inquiries Into Irish Studies

“Textual Discovery” is presented to pique interest in the obscure, yet unique works in Irish language, literature, and history that have been largely forgotten over time. Articles will cover different subject areas, authors, themes, and eras related to the depth and consequence of the Gaeilge experience in its varied forms. The inspiration comes from selections found within the affiliated Irish Rare Book and Special Collections Library at Seton Hall University, but on a deeper level this piece serves to honor works that can be found listed in bibliographical compilations and on the shelves of libraries across the world.

Bad Bridget: Crime, Mayhem, And The Lives Of Irish Emigrant Women By Elaine Farrell And Leanne Mccormick, Penguin, 2023, Elizabeth Brewer Redwine

Critical Inquiries Into Irish Studies

No abstract provided.

Coda: Storytelling As A Cultural Context In Vona Groarke’S Hereafter, Niamh Macgloin

Critical Inquiries Into Irish Studies

No abstract provided.

Storytelling As A Cultural Context For London-Irish Writing In Donall Macamhlaigh’S Schnitzer O’Shea, Jimmy Murphy’S Kings Of The Kilburn High Road And Enda Walsh’S The Walworth Farce, Niamh Macgloin

Critical Inquiries Into Irish Studies

The oral tradition of storytelling is culturally significant to Irish literature and important for immigrant communities as a way to connect with their home culture and share stories without the necessity of literacy. This essay considers the motif of storytelling and the importance of voicing the community in much London-Irish literature. In Walsh’s The Walworth Farce, a play within a play, the main character obsesses over retelling the story of their emigration from Ireland but corrupts its purity as he pushes his narrative of innocence too far, and the cycle of storytelling begins again. Similarly, in Murphy’s Kings of the …

A Gaelic South African Revival?: The Irish Republican Association Of South Africa, The Republic, And Irish South African Identity, Tom Mcgrath

Critical Inquiries Into Irish Studies

In September 1920, at a meeting in Johannesburg, the Irish National Association of South Africa rebranded itself as the Irish Republican Association of South Africa. The IRASA was unique within the history of the Irish in South Africa. While it existed only until 1923, it was the largest Irish group in South African history, made evident by the establishment of its own journal, The Republic. The association was fundamentally devoted to nurturing an “Irish Afrikander” identity and culture within South Africa, primarily through the promotion of Irish works in its journal, from excerpts of Thomas Davis’ writings to a full …

Hereafter: The Telling Life Of Ellen O’Hara: An Interview With Vona Groarke, Elizabeth Brewer Redwine

Critical Inquiries Into Irish Studies

No abstract provided.

The Hidden History Of The Norseman And Celts, Amber Nicole Johnson

Whittier Scholars Program

When people hear the word Celts or Vikings there seems to be a common stigma or romanticization of them. This seems to stem from the early iron age and has shifted over to the 21st century with the production of movies and franchises. They are often depicted as being savage, barbaric, or warrior based (a term used to describe them) when there is a whole other side to these people. In the Spring of 2023, I took an independent study course that allowed me to examine the available archaeological and other evidence to understand the identities of the Germanic and …

Crossing The Pond: The Influence Of Southern Appalachian Old-Time On Contemporary Irish Music, Amanda Morgan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Numerous studies examine Irish traditional music influencing old-time music, but few examine the influence of old-time on contemporary Irish. As our societies become more global, folk music travels faster and becomes more open to influence. Thes influences can be heard in the music of “Alfi” and “Lankum,” two ensembles steeped in Irish traditional music.

This study defines common musical elements of old-time and examines the use of those elements in two recordings: Alfi’s, “Jubilee” and Lankum’s, “The Old Man from Over the Sea.” Much of my data comes from interviews with Irish and American musicians and my own professional knowledge, …

Irish Studies News And Events 2023, Irish Studies

News, Magazines and Reports

Irish Studies at SHU has been growing! In our first newsletter, we are thrilled to share news about our students, faculty, events, courses, the Irish Studies minor, and research and scholarship projects happening in both in Fairfield and Dingle.

Library space houses the newly-donated Connecticut Irish-American Historical Society archives, called The Shanachie Room/Seomra an tSeanchaí, where our Irish language and Irish drama courses are meeting this semester.

Rebels, Murderesses & Harlots: 'Fallen Women', Changes To Gender Relations In Post-Famine Ireland, Lisa Huntingford

Major Papers

A woman is nothing without her reputation. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, a conflict of values emerged for ordinary women in Ireland. It is this conflict that has been under-addressed in the historiography, particularly in the context of the roles institutions played in putting forth a prescribed ideal of womanhood for working class women. Ordinary women risked ostracization and condemnation when stepping out of the prescribed roles of daughter, domestic servant, and mother. In doing so, this increased the likelihood working class women would come into contact with moral reformists, the court system or religious organizations which …

The Multi-Period Cairn At Cnoc Raithní, Inis Oírr, Aran Islands, Co Galway, Keith Murphy

Articles

Across the Irish landscape we are fortunate to have plenty of well-preserved archaeological monuments. One such monument, embedded within the landscape, stands proudly on the island of Inis Oirr in Aran. This Bronze Age cairn, Cnoc Raithní, (Hill of the Ferns), has been identified as a multi-purpose burial mound used by both people from the Bronze Age and the early Christian period. Although the burial has never been excavated, it had an inspection after a storm in 1885 and further investigations have being conducted by the author and a Bronze Age pottery expert.. The Cnoc Raithní, Tumulus is one of …

The Literary Fairy: Celtic Folklore’S Influence On Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Joshua Dobbs

Doctoral Dissertations

There is a dissonance between the folkloric fairies and those presented by pop-cultural institutions such as Disney which has effected modern literary criticism of nineteenth-century British literature. The Disnified fairy is feminine, small, capable of flight, often with insect-like wings, and equipped with a magic wand with which she does good deeds to help others. She is largely based on fairy tales and is the embodiment of the modern conceptualization of the fairy, but she bears little, if any, resemblance to the fearsome fairies of Celtic folklore. Although nineteenth-century literature is rife with folkloric fairy references, those references are frequently …

Téacsúil Fionnachtain, Alan Delozier

Critical Inquiries Into Irish Studies

No abstract provided.

Gothic Girlhood And Resistance: Confronting Ireland’S Neoliberal Containment Culture In Tana French’S The Secret Place, Mollie Kervick

Critical Inquiries Into Irish Studies

The Secret Place (2014) exposes a persistent Western cultural impulse to contain the emotions of teenage girls when they demonstrate control over their lives. In the Irish context, the dismissal of teenage girls is resonant of a containment culture in which controlling women’s bodies and minds has been essential to upholding heteropatriarchal ideals. Resistance to the novel’s unresolved supernatural elements by readers and critics and the lack of sustained academic scholarship also point to an unsettling complacency with the neoliberal impulse to contain female emotion and lived experience in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland.

Crime On The Periphery: Tana French’S Criminal Geography, Deirdre Flynn

Critical Inquiries Into Irish Studies

This article will analyze how Tana French conceptualizes spatiality, focusing on her use of liminal spaces, edgelands and peripheries, as the settings for her crime scenes. Instead of more traditional Irish literary urban-rural binaries, French exploits the interface of both places, reflecting a contemporary post-industrial, post-Celtic Tiger Ireland. In particular, in In the Woods (2007) the untamed woodland behind the housing estate in Knocknaree becomes an interfacial zone between the rural and urban, past and present. In The Likeness (2009), Whitethorn House sits at the edge of the village geographically, politically, and historically. In French’s first two novels peripheral spaces …

Tana French: An Interview With Brian Cliff, Brian Cliff

Critical Inquiries Into Irish Studies

No abstract provided.

He Had Two Women To Die For, Ireland And The Missus”: Mothers As Abject And Sons As Scapegoats In Edna O’Brien’S House Of Splendid Isolation And In The Forest, Emily Nix

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

This thesis examines the protagonists in Edna O’Brien’s In the Forest and House of Splendid Isolation and applies Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection and Rene Girard’s theory of the scapegoat. In doing so, I attempt to give a richer understanding of O’Brien’s masculine and feminine characters and how their constructed identities are based on their cultural circumstances and positions in their societies. I use Kristeva’s theory of abjection to analyze the single women in these novels, Eily and Josie, who become metaphorical single mothers by the invasions of young men into their homes. Then, I apply Girard’s theory of the …

Exploring The Regional Traditions Of Fiddling, Anna N. Eyink

Music Theses

During the 1600s, the modern violin traveled from Italy to the British Isles and North America. The instrument became a vital piece of each region's musical culture, and distinct fiddling traditions became established in Ireland, Scotland, Cape Breton, and America. This thesis explores the history of the Irish, Scottish, Cape Breton, Appalachian, and bluegrass fiddling traditions. Additionally, the performance practices of each style are discussed in depth and are related back to the traditional tunes recorded as a part of this project.

Resurrecting Gaelic: Modernity And Heritage Language Revival In Scotland In A Comparative Perspective, Sean Coady

Student Research Submissions

Many people from across the world have little or no connection to their heritage languages. Whether this loss is caused by conquest, colonialization, or simply lack of parent-child transmission, many believe that they are missing an integral part of their cultural identity and want to reclaim the languages of their forebearers. There is wide debate about how, why, and if this linguistic reclamation and revitalization should happen because, in the face of modernity and language evolution, the best solutions are not always clear. What constitutes successful language revitalization in the modern world, and why does it happen? Gaelic in Scotland …

Japanese-English Translation: Katayama Hiroko—Jesus And Simon Peter (June 1953), Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty Scholarship

Translation of 「イエスとペトロ」、片山廣子著、昭和２８年６月

Source: Aozora Bunko (a digital archive of public-domain Japanese-language works)

General website: https://www.aozora.gr.jp

Current text: https://www.aozora.gr.jp/cards/001346/files/50159_41222.html

A “Medieval” Myth For A “Modern” Empire Britain Under The Shadow Of Arthur (1461–1612), Julian Gonzalez De Leon Heiblum

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation studies the use of the Arthurian myth from the fifteenth through early seventeenth centuries, as a narrative that connected a set of political principles for the unification of Britain and its imperial expansion. Joining other competing political myths in the British archipelago, the political significance of the Arthurian myth has nevertheless been overlooked. On the one hand, the myth informed the transformations of kingship in England and Wales from the crowning of Edward IV to the early years of James’ English reign. It did so specifically within the process of institutionalizing a British crown which was intertwined with …

Brigid Of Kildare: The Saint Who Got A Facelift, Aimee Hunt

Student Research

On the outskirts of Papal authority, early medieval Ireland created its own Christian identity separate from other European nations closer to Rome. Saint Brigid of Kildare, one of the patron saints of Ireland, played important yet problematic roles in that identity. After her death, the church began to alter her history. Being a female bishop, performing the first recorded abortion, and having both men and women within her monastery, Brigid had trodden on the male-dominated system in a way that few women had. Deemed unacceptable but having already been sainted, the Catholic church gave Brigid a holy facelift.

Do Androids Dream Of Improvisation?, Aidan J. Samp

Senior Projects Spring 2022

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

Preface To Ssl 47.2, Patrick Scott, Tony Jarrells

Studies in Scottish Literature

Introduces the issue contents and briefly describes plans for forthcoming issues, and notes the recent deaths of two longtime SSL contributors, Henry L. Fulton (1935-2021) and Edward J. Cowan (1944-2022).

‘Co-Ainm Na Taca Seo An-Uiridh’: Dugald Macnicol’S Caribbean Lament For Argyll, Nigel Leask, Peadar Ó Muircheartaigh

Studies in Scottish Literature

This article examines a Gaelic song written in 1816 in St. Lucia by a Scottish Gaelic-speaking army officer from Argyll, Dugald MacNicol (1791-1844), sketching MacNicol's life and military career in the Caribbean, in the Royal West Indian Rangers and later in the 1st Royals (Royal Scots Regiment), placing the song in relation to other Gaelic poems of emigration and exile, and printing a newly-edited text of MacNicol's song alongside the authors' English translation.

Douglas Young, Hellenist, Ward Briggs

Studies in Scottish Literature

A reassessment of the Scottish writer Douglas Young's career as classicist, poet, translator, and teacher, tracing the centrality to his achievement of his commitment to Greek literature and classical scholarship.

Law And The Imagination In Medieval Wales. Robin Chapman Stacey. Philadelphia: University Of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. 344 Pages. Isbn: 978-0-8122-5051-0., Marisa Mills

e-Keltoi: Journal of Interdisciplinary Celtic Studies

No abstract provided.

The Shanachie, Volume 33, Number 3, Connecticut Irish-American Historical Society

The Shanachie (CTIAHS)

In this issue: Theater presents musical on career of ace softball pitcher Joan Joyce -- The railroad era and an Irish family -- Lyons family immigrated to Connecticut by way of Quebec -- Plumber with Leitrim roots linked to New Haven Fenians -- Collection of Irish railroad wife's writings preserved at UConn.

The Bard In Napoleonic France And Revivalist Wales: A Contrasting Symbol Of Nationality, Resistance And Liminality, Shelley Morwenna Williams

e-Keltoi: Journal of Interdisciplinary Celtic Studies

Spurred by antiquarianism and the quest for a pan-Celtic, non-classical mythology, two infamous translators and forgers sparked influential and prolific artistic production in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries. James Macpherson (1736-1796) and his Ossian provided fuel to the fire stoked by Napoleon Bonaparte for a new imperial art, and Edward Williams (Iolo Morganwg, 1747-1826) contributed to an ardent cultural revival in Wales. Both writers have garnered renewed scholarly attention in recent decades, mostly focused on uncovering the genuine Celtic and medieval sources from which they so liberally borrowed. However, scant attention has been paid to the …

Ethnicity And “Women Religious”: How Irish-American And Other Ethnic Nuns Were Presented In American Newspapers From 1865 To 1915, Lydia Hursh

Honors Theses

While Catholicism in America has had a turbulent history of mixed rejection and acceptance, the American Catholic Church prior to World War One was not considered a monolithic institution by the American clergy or in certain contexts by the American press. Women religious, such as nuns, were considered unnatural and malevolent at the worst, although this characterization in popular opinion declined after the Civil War, to unusual but benevolent at the best. Moreover, ethnicity was a determining factor among male authors for where on the sliding-scale of social alienation a nun or her convent might fall, although the degree of …