Talk:Irish literature

Untitled comment

As I have done a lot of work on the Irish poetry page, I'd like to suggest a possible way forward with this page now.

This page to consist of four short sections: Intro, Poetry, Fiction, Theatre, each outlining briefly the history of the field and the Fiction and Theatre sections linking out to more detailied pages somewhat along the lines of the Irish poetry page. I am happy to draft the poetry section and will try the other two if nobody else wants to take them on. Bmills 16:51, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

broadly agreed

I found the Irish Literature page pretty vacuous and have tried to give it a bit of structure in the last week, but I am not an expert in the field. The set up Bmills describes sounds good to me (and his/her Irish poetry page is excellent). The front page should mention a few key figures for each form, for the benefit of the person who won't go further. It would also be good if the front page could have a stab at saying what is distinctive about Irish literature as a whole - it should state the essence of Irishness in 3 lines. (After that, we can make the UK train system run on time). seglea 16:57, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

first stab

i've put in a bit on poetry, any comments? The real problem is going to be putting together the Irish fiction and Irish theatre pages. Bmills 17:10, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I am now going to see if this page can be removed from Wikipedia:Pages needing attention . Bmills 11:29, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Heaney

What happened to Seamus Heaney? Pfortuny 11:33, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

He's in the last paragraph of the Poetry section. Bmills 11:44, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Apologies. I need an optician asap!!!

Temporal aspect

I was surprised to see that Wikipedia has no article on Old Irish literature, particularly as we have articles on many of its component parts (echtra, immram, Táin Bó Cúailnge, Mael Dúin, Lebor na hUidre, Book of Leinster, metrical Dindshenchas). I wonder if we should create a new section for Old Irish literature here (where the focus is modern – or at least post-Baroque) or make a new article. Then of course, we come to Middle Irish literature (Céitinn etc) which also deserves treatment... Alas that this is so far out of my expertise! QuartierLatin1968 16:45, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Non-English works?

I think it would be interesting to read a small section on works which were published by Irish authors in languages other than English and Irish. I know that Beckett wrote a lot in French, but which other authors also did so? What about the other Irish authors who moved to France or Switzerland, what language(s) did they publish their works in? In what other languages can people read originals of Irish literature?

Thanks in advance if anyone add a few sentences on this. --Gronky 19:27, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Oldest literature

It says on the welsh literature pages that welsh is the third oldest form of literature in Europe which ones older?Celtic Harper (talk) 11:15, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

The whole claim is somewhat outdated. Greek literature certainly dates as far back as the 7th century BC, and possibly to the 8th. Latin literature dates back to at least the 3rd century BC, possibly older. However, it isn't obvious to me that we *know* there were no literary works written in Etruscan - one long Etruscan work sort of survives, and I hear it may be in the process of translation, and we know Roman historians had Etruscan histories as sources. Meanwhile, there are several untranslated languages that have left materials (Linear A, several Iberian scripts) that could conceivably be literary, although the odds are against it.

But let's just assume that Greek really is #1, and Latin really is #2. In that case, neither Welsh nor Irish is #3. To start with, can Gothic make that claim? What survives in Gothic is some Bible translations and a commentary, mostly from the 4th century AD. I have the impression that a commentary isn't enough to justify "literature" in this claim's meaning.

Armenian literature - and Armenia as far as I know remains part of Europe - starts shortly after the creation of the Armenian alphabet in AD 406. (Unlike Welsh and Irish, early Armenian literature includes history-writing.) This would make Armenian #3 if we rule Gothic out.

Georgian literature has much less secure 5th century AD claims; Wikipedia on this literature is inadequate (both "Georgian language" and "Culture of Georgia" cautiously support a very late manuscript's claim to a single 5th century text, but no article carries the story forward), and I'm not at a library to check things for myself. Georgian is provisionally #4 (or #5).

By any reasonable standard, Irish is a good candidate for #5, or if Georgian's claim fails, then #4. (If Georgian and Gothic both win, #6.) We have sixth-century manuscripts with Irish poems written in their margins.

Welsh is, at best, #5, or even #6 or #7. The claims that we have sixth-century Welsh literature are like the claims that we have fifth-century Georgian literature - based on writings surviving in *much* younger manuscripts, that include references to events of the relevant date - but with the difference that we have fewer and worse notated Welsh inscriptions to compare linguistic forms to.

If we reject the Georgian and Welsh early claims, then those literatures still may be high in the rankings, but we start getting into the mistier datings of things like Eddaic poems (Old Norse), Old English texts, and possibly Old High German works too. All of which are in the same boat as Welsh and Georgian, making much younger manuscripts claim older contents. I think it's pointless to try to rank European literatures younger than Irish chronologically with any exactness.

I have verified that as of this posting, "Irish literature" and "Literature of Wales (Welsh language)" are still both making the "third oldest" claim in Wikipedia. Ironically, "Armenian literature" does not make that claim, but provides the evidence to refute the pages that do.

Joe Bernstein joe@sfbooks.com

not a registered Wikipedian, but a longtime researcher into ancient and early mediaeval literatures; see my website at <http://www.panix.com/~josephb/> or my entries in <The Encyclopedia of Fantasy> ed. John Clute and John Grant. I say this not to back up my arguments re #3 above - none of the materials referred to addresses these issues, in fact - but simply to provide some bona fides since I'm *not* registered.

Oh, and just to mess with y'all's heads. Hittite literature was written in the Asiatic part of Turkey, and if you read enough of it you see how much it has in common with literatures like Akkadian and Phoenician (only it's more boring, taken as a whole). But if you've been reading enough of those Semitic literatures, maybe plus Egyptian, and you suddenly turn to Hittite, it feels astonishingly European after all. There are forests; there are mists; people get cold ... 75.165.10.136 (talk) 08:03, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Actually Joe, even checking the Wikipedia page on Armenia, you'll discover that Armenia tends to be considered as being in Asia rather than Europe by sources such as the UN classification of world regions, which places Armenia in Western Asia; the CIA World Factbook [1], National Geographic, and Encyclopædia Britannica also place Armenia in Asia. (Although one or two are also quoted as considering it in Europe). Wikipedia accordingly has placed it in the Wikipedia category "Western Asia" not Europe. As for Georgian and Gothic their claims are a bit dubious as you outlined. So there is most certainly a strong argument for Irish being top non-classical. If you think otherwise, you need a source that says something eles is oldest non-classical in Europe. 78.152.252.32 (talk) 00:02, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Additions and changes

I have augmented the sections on literature in Irish, adding references. (Some of the sources referred to are themselves in Irish, as they are by far the most comprehensive.) I intend to add a section on Irish writing in Latin, as it is a large corpus in its own right and should have its own main article.

I have left the references to Goldsmith and Sheridan, though their careers and cultural interests seem to have been entirely English. The same applies, to a certain extent, even to Swift, who was certainly happiest in England and would have stayed there if he could.

Colin Ryan (talk) 00:55, 21 January 2011 (UTC)