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Current Research Projects in Classics at NUI Galway

Classical Reception in Modern Literatures (Arkins)

Brian Arkins is conducting a long-term project on the reception and recreation of Classical themes in English-language literature since the Renaissance, with particular reference to Anglo-Irish authors and to Shakespeare. In the context of this project, three books will be published in 2010/11: Irish Appropriations of Greek Tragedy (Carysfort Press); The Thought of W. B. Yeats (Peter Lang Publications); and a new edition of J.P. Mahaffy’s Rambles and Studies in Greece of 1876 (Colin Smythe Publishing). A further monograph, What Shakespeare Stole from Rome, is also nearing publication.

Latin/Old Irish Bilingualism in Early Medieval Ireland (Bisagni)

Jacopo Bisagni was recently awarded a research grant under the NUI Galway Millennium Fund Minor Project scheme, for a year-long project entitled ’Testing methodologies for the study of Latin/Old Irish bilingualism in Early Medieval Ireland’.

Given that a large proportion of vernacular texts produced in Ireland in the Early Middle Ages can to some extent be described as ’bilingual’ (containing variable amounts of Latin words, sentences or sections), this project aims at finding a way to answer questions such as: what type of bilingualism are we dealing with? How, and in which contexts, were Latin and Irish used by the members of the Irish intellectual elite? Was Latin ever used in Ireland for purposes other than scholarly writing? And even: to which extent was Latin a ’foreign language’ in Early Medieval Ireland?

The project will especially focus on the phenomenon known as code-switching (i.e. the switch from a language to another occurring between different sentences or even within the same sentence), studying its written manifestations in Old Irish glosses and prose texts, such as the Turin glosses on the Gospel of St Mark, the Biblical scholia and the Irish material on St Patrick contained in the Book of Armagh, the Karlsruhe glosses on the works of St Augustine and Bede, the Vienna glosses on Bede’s De Temporum Ratione, and the seventh-century Cambrai Homily. The results achieved through this research will constitute a sort of prolegomenon to a larger, full-scale study of Latin/Old Irish bilingualism, which should take into account more extensive corpora such as the Würzburg glosses, the Milan glosses, etc.

Togail Troí: Greek Mythology in Medieval Irish (Clarke)

Building on a long-term interest in the comparative study of Classical and medieval literatures and languages, Michael Clarke is working on Togail Troí, the Middle Irish narrative of the Trojan War. He developed this focus in 2007 as a visiting Fellow at the School of Celtic Studies, DIAS, and he is now mainly concerned with the unpublished Third Recension of Togail Troí, which dates from the late medieval period but incorporates much older materials. He is working on an edition and translation of the text based on two closely-related manuscripts, RIA MS D.iv.2 and King’s Inns Irish MS 12, with additional materials from the Book of Ballymote. This in turn forms part of a broader study of the reception and recreation of Late Antique myth as pseudohistory in the Insular vernaculars.

The siege of Troy, from a fourteenth-century manuscript of Benoit de Sainte-More

Articles published:

• (forthcoming), ’Cross-cultural translation in medieval English and Irish’, in M. Clarke and K. Shields (eds.), Translating Emotion (Peter Lang Publications).
• (2009) ’An Irish Achilles and a Greek Cú Chulainn’, in R. Ó hUiginn and B. Ó Catháin, eds., Ulidia II: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on the Ulster Cycle, 271–84 (Dublin)
• (2006) ’Achilles, Byrhtnoth, Cú Chulainn: from Homer to the medieval North’, in M. Clarke, B. Currie and R.O.A.M. Lyne (eds.), Epic Interactions, 243–72 (Oxford)

Mediterranean Ceramics on Early Medieval Sites in Ireland (Kelly)

Amanda Kelly's identification of Phocaean Red Slip Ware (Ai ware) and Late Roman 1 (Bii ware) at Collierstown 1 constitutes a valuable asset in an Early Medieval context as their manufacture can be, respectively, attributed to a centre in Asia Minor and the broader Antioch region; provenances which have major implications for long-distance connectivity in the Early Medieval period. Their distribution in Ireland could be extended considerably through a review of the published excavations of relatively high-status Irish sites. Similarly, the identification of the first fragment of African Red Slip Ware in Ireland (found at Kilree 3 near Kilkenny) complies with British trading models whereby main cargoes were loaded in the eastern Mediterranean, picking up a subsidiary produce in North Africa on their way through the Straits of Gibraltar and into the Atlantic to Britain, and, now, for the first time, to Ireland.

The Karpathos Survey (Kelly)

D.J. Ian Begg (Dept. of Ancient History and Classics, Trent University) and Dr. Michael C. Nelson (Queens College, CUNY) have invited Amanda Kelly to act as their ceramic specialist and architectural advisor on a paleo-Christian/Byzantine survey on Karpathos in Greece (courtesy of the Canadian Archaeological Institute at Athens and the 22nd Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities and the 4th Ephorate of Byzantine Antiquities of Greece). The season will commence in July and Dr Kelly hopes to identify bathing and ecclesiastical complexes, and to distinguish profiles of 4th–7th century AD ceramics, for future analysis.

Cultural Contexts of the Priscian Glosses (Moran)

Pádraic Moran is currently working on a two-year postdoctoral project (2009–2011), funded by the IRCHSS, which will explore the cultural background of the glosses on St Gall, Stiftsbibliothek, MS 904. The manuscript is a copy, written in 850–1, of Priscian’s Institutiones Grammaticae ( Foundations of Grammar), a monumental treatise on Latin grammar completed c. 526/7, in which the author aimed to synthesize much of the Greek and Latin grammatical traditions. It was written in Irish script, probably in Ireland, and contains over 9,400 interlinear and marginal glosses, in addition to c. 4,000 construe marks (symbols to aid reading). More than one-third of these glosses were written in Old Irish (the remainder in Latin), and as such constitute one of our most important corpora for that phase of the Irish language.

The project has already launched a new digital edition, based on the transcription of Rijcklof Hofman, which makes all of the glosses available for the first time, presented alongside the text of Priscian, with links to manuscript images and other resources. The digital edition is available at:
www.stgallpriscian.ie

The project is also concerned with the cultural contexts of the glosses, exploring the glossators' knowledge of Greek, their use of Classical and Late Antique sources, the relationship of the Irish gloss tradition to that of other Priscian manuscripts, and pedagogical strategies for teaching Latin in the early Middle Ages.

Columbanus Life and Legacy (Stansbury)

This project is concerned with the life and legacy of St Columbanus (540–615). Its primary objectives are  an archaeological survey and analysis of the earliest Columbanian foundations in France, a review of the stylistic and iconographic exchanges between the Insular world and the Continent, and a new edition and annotated translation of the Latin text of Jonas' life of the saint.

The project's personnel are Mark Stansbury and Conor Newman (Archaeology) co-principal investigators, Aidan Breen, post-doctoral fellow, Emmet Marron and Christine Allan, PhD students. The project is supported by funding from PRTLI 4 and is a participant in the Texts Contexts and Culture programme of the Moore Institute. In addition, it has received a generous grant from the Mellon Foundation to further international contacts.
    

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