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IMC 2020: Sessions

Session 234: Mapping Cultural Geographies between Past and Present: Burials in Early Irish Literature

Monday 6 July 2020, 14.15-15.45

Organiser:Sarah Künzler, School of Humanities (Celtic & Gaelic) University of Glasgow
Moderator/Chair:Christina Cleary, School of Celtic Studies Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies
Paper 234-aTextual Graveyards: Inventing the Dead and (Re)Drawing Borders in Medieval Ireland
(Language: English)
Kristen Mills, Institutt for lingvistiske og nordiske studier, Universitetet i Oslo
Index terms: Language and Literature - Celtic, Mentalities
Paper 234-bQuis est sepultus hic?: Burials and the Boundary between the Past and the Present in Medieval Irish Literature
(Language: English)
Helen Imhoff, Independent Scholar, Göttingen
Index terms: Hagiography, Language and Literature - Celtic, Language and Literature - Scandinavian
Paper 234-cExploring Pasts and Places: Burial Monuments in Early Irish Literature
(Language: English)
Sarah Künzler, School of Humanities (Celtic & Gaelic) University of Glasgow
Index terms: Language and Literature - Celtic, Mentalities, Onomastics
Abstract

References to ancestral burials in medieval Irish literature are related to various borderlines: they can be linked to tribal borders, they are emblematic of attitudes to the border between life and death, and they can blur the distinction between the pagan past and the Christian present. The papers explore the reflective engagements with borders which are embedded in early Irish texts and other North Atlantic literatures. They argue that in these literatures, borders can thus reveal profound human concerns about the spatial organisation of knowledge and social orders.