‘Allegory, the áes dána and the Liberal Arts in Medieval Irish Literature’, in Grammatica, Gramadach and Gramadeg: Vernacular Grammar and Grammarians in Medieval Ireland and Wales, ed. Deborah Hayden and Paul Russell (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2016), pp. 11-34 The present study briefly considers the vernacular terminology used to describe figurative language in medieval Irish literature, and […]
(co-authored with Liam Breatnach), ‘Senchas Gall Átha Clíath: Aspects of the Cult of St Patrick in the Twelfth Century’, in Sacred Histories: A Festschrift for Máire Herbert, ed. J. Carey, K. Murray & C. Ó Dochartaigh (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2015), pp. 22-55 This Festschrift contribution comprises the first edition, translation and detailed discussion of Senchas […]
‘The Rhetoric and Reality of Reform in Irish Eschatological Thought, c. 1000 – 1150’, History of Religions 55:3 (2016), 269-88 This essay challenges the ideas that the ‘great fear’ recorded in Irish annals for the year 1096 was the culmination of an escalating rhetoric of apocalypticism, and that it was a trigger for the ecclesiastical reform […]
‘The Impiety of the Intellect: Whitley Stokes and the Pre-Raphaelites’, in The Tripartite Life of Whitley Stokes (1830-1909), ed. Elizabeth Boyle and Paul Russell (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2011), pp. 44-58 Discusses Whitley Stokes’ involvement with the Pre-Raphaelite movement in London, 1852-62, focusing particularly on his influence on Dante Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, William Allingham and F. […]
English translation of the Latin treatise De tribus habitaculis animae. (Note that the PDF published here is of the pre-publication proofs.) De_tribus_habitaculis_animae_Concerning
‘On the Wonders of Ireland: Translation and Adaptation’, in Authorities and Adaptations: the Reworking and Transmission of Textual Sources in Medieval Ireland, ed. Elizabeth Boyle & Deborah Hayden (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 2014), pp. 233-61 Taking the Latin poem De mirabilibus Hiberniae as its starting point, this essay examines the translation, reworking and transmission […]
‘Lay Morality, Clerical Immorality, and Pilgrimage in Tenth-Century Ireland: Cethrur Macclérech and Epscop do Gáedelaib’, Studia Hibernica 39 (2013), 9-48 The subject of this essay is a pair of medieval Irish ecclesiastical anecdotes, namely Cethrur macclérech (‘Four Junior Clerics’) and Epscop do Gáedelaib (‘A Bishop of the Gaels’). Insofar as they have received any scholarly attention, these […]
‘Sacrifice and Salvation in Echtgus Úa Cúanáin’s Poetic Treatise on the Eucharist’, in Envisioning Christ on the Cross: Ireland and the Early Medieval West, ed. J. Mullins, J. Ní Ghrádaigh & R. Hawtree (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2013), pp. 181-94 This essay discusses the use of the Passion narrative in Echtgus Úa Cúanáin’s Middle Irish poetic […]
‘The Authorship and Transmission of De tribus habitaculis animae’, Journal of Medieval Latin 22 (2012), 49-65 This study argues that Aubrey Gwynn’s attribution of the Latin treatise De tribus habitaculis animae to Patrick of Dublin (d. 1084) is not supported by the manuscript evidence or the early transmission of the text. It is argued that, in the […]
‘A Welsh Record of an Anglo-Saxon Political Mutilation’, Anglo-Saxon England 35 (2006), 245-9 A previously unidentified annal-entry in the Welsh chronicles Brut y Tywysogion and Brenhinedd y Saesson records the blinding of the sons of Ealdorman Ælfhelm as part of the ‘palace revolution’ of 1006. This article discusses how the Old English names Wulfheah and Ufegeat […]
