Representation of the tales of the Ulster Cycle in Foras Feasa ar Éirinn: Sources and features of the retellings

TY - JOUR

T1 - Representation of the tales of the Ulster Cycle in Foras Feasa ar Éirinn

T2 - Sources and features of the retellings

AU - Levin, Feliks

N1 - Funding Information: Irish tradition: patterns of Foras Feasa ar Éirinn’ carried out in the University of Marburg in 2016/2017 under the supervision of erich Poppe and sponsored by the DAAD and Saint-Petersburg State University. I would like to thank erich Poppe for the invaluable assistance throughout the preparation of this part of the article and detailed discussions of my findings; Michéal Hoyne for his help in identifying the sources of verse in the examined fragment of the narratives and its analysis; as well as the reviewers of my article and the editors of Studia Hibernica for the useful suggestions for improving the article. Publisher Copyright: © 2018 Liverpool University Press. All rights reserved.

PY - 2018/9/1

Y1 - 2018/9/1

N2 - This article deals with the representation of tales of the Ulster Cycle in Foras Feasa ar Éirinn, written by Geoffrey Keating in the seventeenth century. Among the sources of retellings of these stories, the article focuses on that copied in Cambridge McClean MS 187, which may have been the Black Book of Molaga, the hypothetical primary source of the death tales reproduced in Foras Feasa ar Éirinn, of which editors and students of the Ulster Cycle have not been aware. On closer examination it becomes evident that the tales as represented in Keating's work and McClean 187, as well as other tales included in the Foras, were reworkings of earlier variants of the tales. Keating did not merely copy his primary sources but rather revised them: he either rearranged the plot of the original story or modified it in accordance with his own authorial intentions.

AB - This article deals with the representation of tales of the Ulster Cycle in Foras Feasa ar Éirinn, written by Geoffrey Keating in the seventeenth century. Among the sources of retellings of these stories, the article focuses on that copied in Cambridge McClean MS 187, which may have been the Black Book of Molaga, the hypothetical primary source of the death tales reproduced in Foras Feasa ar Éirinn, of which editors and students of the Ulster Cycle have not been aware. On closer examination it becomes evident that the tales as represented in Keating's work and McClean 187, as well as other tales included in the Foras, were reworkings of earlier variants of the tales. Keating did not merely copy his primary sources but rather revised them: he either rearranged the plot of the original story or modified it in accordance with his own authorial intentions.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85053511644&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.3828/sh.2018.1

DO - 10.3828/sh.2018.1

M3 - Review

AN - SCOPUS:85053511644

SN - 0081-6477

VL - 44

SP - 1

EP - 33

JO - Studia Hibernica

JF - Studia Hibernica

ER -