Paper -a:
In the Irish prose epic Táin Bó Cúailnge, the theme of kin-violence underlies the narrative's depiction of a foundational war between Irish provinces: the text stresses the emotional harm done to the hero Cú Chulainn by the conflicting claims of multiple kinship ties. Although Cú Chulainn maintains ties of family and loyalty to his uncle Conchobar as he defends Ulster, the intricacies of honor and strategy require him to take sides against other highly valued male kin - his foster-father and foster-brothers - in the fight for the possession of the Brown Bull of Cooley. These 'fictive' kinship ties often involve at least as much emotional attachment as blood relationships and play an equally large role in the entanglements of loyalty and inheritance that form the backbone of medieval Irish prose narrative.
Paper -b:
In the hitherto unedited 14th-century Irish bardic inauguration ode Fa urraidh labhras leac Themhrach, the 'Stone of Destiny' at Tara announces the name of the new king. Having continental analogues in the 'Prince's Stone' and 'Duke's Chair' in Karinthia, and the Mora Sten of Sweden, the stone figures frequently as a rhetorical affirmation of the patrons right to rule, and traces its literary origins to The Second Battle of Mag Tuired and other early tales. The poem's depiction of the talking stone offers a striking glimpse at a literary tradition that deeply informed late medieval Irish notions of kingship.
Paper -c:
The Middle Welsh historical text Brut y Saeson is unusual in that it focusses specifically on the kings of England from the seventh century to the fourteenth. Virtually undiscussed until now, this paper will contextualise the work and argue that it occupied an important role in a group of historical texts which provided a genealogical conception of the Welsh past. Brut y Saeson focusses closely on the genealogical relationships of the English kings, and is a concerted attempt to place Anglo-Saxon history within a Galfridian historical framework and to cast the kings of the English as the direct successors of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Hengist. These features suggest that it was composed to explain the place of the English kings to the Welsh gentry who were increasingly involved in English administrative structures in the years after the Edwardian conquest, contextualising these rulers within the genealogical framework of Welsh history.
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