Early Irish Literature.
Author: DILLON, Myles.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958 (2nd impression). xix, 192 pages. Hardback.
“… an incandescent vision a wildness of imagination, sensibility to sound and colour and form, … human passion, love, sorrow, and anger…”
These are the qualities of Gaelic literature which the world will always hold dear. They are nowhere more clearly reflected than in the sagas, traditional tales, and semi-historical legends of early Ireland in this volume.
Here are the stories of great Irish heroes as colorful as Ulysses and as powerful as Hercules—men possessed of passion, robust good humor, and terrible courage. Here is Cu Chulainn, mighty champion of the Ulstermen, fighting three days without rest and destroying, single-handed, three hundred enemies.
Here are the tales of Mael Fothartaig, whose great virtue brought him to death at the hand of his own father, and of the ravishingly beautiful Deirdre, who brought tragedy to herself and to all whose lives she touched.
Here, too, is the comic Diarmid, revealing his hiding place to an irate pursuer because he could not resist the urge to show him the winning move in a game of chess. And accounts of mystical and religious experiences, such as the vision of Adamnan, whose soul views the brightness of Heaven, where the saints sing the glory of God and Christ sits in splendor upon a throne of precious gems.
To the Irish, language is a living thing. Hence it is not surprising to find poetry of the greatest charm in this book. Verse is intermingled with prose in many of the tales, and the final chapter of the book is made up of. representative poems—poems of the beautiful, the tragic, the humorous in man and in nature.
Selecting the best Gaelic poems and legends, translating some of them for the first time, and weaving them together with the story of their development and historical setting, Mr. Dillon introduces the modern reader to this great heritage from the Irish past.
CONTENTS:-
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
INTRODUCTION
I. THE ULSTER CYCLE
II. THE FENIAN CYCLE
III. THE MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE
IV. THE HISTORICAL CYCLES
V. THE ADVENTURES
VI. THE VOYAGES
VII. THE VISIONS
VIII. IRISH POETRY
INDEX OF TITLES
INDEX OF FIRST LINES
ISBN: None/Unknown
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