Undergraduate Course: Outlaws and Monsters: The Finn Cycle in Ireland and Scotland (CELT10059)
Course Outline
| School | School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 4 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Taught in Gaelic? | Yes |
| Summary | This course gives students an introduction to the vast body of Fianaigecht, or the Ossianic legendary traditions of Fionn mac Cumhaill and his band of warriors. This is a corpus which includes verse, prose romances, heroic ballads, place-name lore, folktales, proverbs and much else besides, and it has been a key part of Gaelic literary and oral culture in Ireland and Scotland for many centuries. We will trace the growth and development of the tradition from the early medieval period to the present, the interaction of written and oral literature and how the tradition has been reshaped, (mis)represented, collected, argued over and studied.
The course will primarily consist of the discussion of edited written texts, but students will also make use of other materials held in the University's unique multilingual collections: audio recordings in the School of Scottish Studies Archives and/or manuscripts in the Carmichael-Watson Collection.
The course will be taught in either Gaelic or English depending on students' existing Gaelic language compentence. |
| Course description |
Academic description
This course is an exploration of the Fianaigecht tradition from the early medieval period to the present, giving students the opportunity to study texts of a range of different types and dates, which are unified by their focus on a core set of characters and events. They will gain experience of working with a range of primary sources, as well as engaging with and discussing key scholarly approaches on the origins and development of those sources, set within the wider historical and cultural contexts of medieval and modern Scotland and Ireland. Most of the materials used in the course will be ones that have been edited and translated into English, but students will also have the opportunity to work with audio and manuscript sources as well, giving them first-hand experience of using unedited materials and confronting the issues in doing so that are faced by scholars.
By the end of the course, students should have a sound understanding of the development of the Fianaigecht tradition and the scholarly discourses around different aspects of it, as well as experience of working with a range of different kinds of primary sources from manuscripts to printed translations which will help them develop their research and interpretation skills.
Outline of content
The course is divided into two sections. Following a general introduction, the first charts the development of the tradition across a range of genres in the medieval and early modern periods, taking in poetry, sagas, romances, heroic ballads and folk tales, structured broadly by chronology. The second takes the publication of James Macpherson's Ossian in the 1760s as a turning point, and considers the modern oral tradition and the processes of collection, recontextualisation and revival from the middle of the eighteenth century to the present.
The second half of the course will also include an archive project, in which students will engage with audio recordings and/or manuscript versions of ballads or stories from the oral tradition, gaining key insight into the processes of collecting these materials, but also of performance context and the role of individual tradition bearers within Gaelic-speaking communities.
Student learning experience
The course will consist of two one-hour classes per week, on separate days. The first will be an introduction to that week¿s topic with time for questions, led by the instructor. The second will be a discussion of that week's set primary texts, informed by the relevant scholarship. This second, discussion-based class, will be guided by questions and prompts from the instructor.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Be able to explain the development of the Fianaigecht tradition in written and oral literature in Ireland and Scotland, as well as a critical understanding the scholarship on this tradition.
- Understand the wider literary, political and cultural contexts in which the tradition emerged and developed, including how the tradition has been recontextualised from the Romantic period onwards, as Gaelic culture became increasingly minoritised in Ireland and Scotland.
- Demonstrate the ability to express ideas in written and oral communication, including the ability to construct a sound and well-supported argument in written and oral forms.
- Be able to assess a problem and research it using primary sources and specialist research tools such as the Fionn Folklore Database.
- Demonstrate skills in archive research with audio and/or manuscript sources, including the effective use of catalogues and metadata.
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Reading List
Essential
Bruford, A.J and D.A. MacDonald, Scottish Traditional Tales (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2004), Introduction, pp. 1 - 35.
Campbell, John Francis (ed. and trans.) Popular Tales of the West Highlands Vol. 4 (Edinburgh: 1862) - 'How the Een was set up', pp. 331 - 344; 'The Reason why the dallag (dog-fish) is called the King's Fish' pp. 344 - 345
Carey, John (tr.), 'The Boyhood Deeds of Finn', in John T. Koch, and John Carey (eds.), The Celtic Heroic Age. Literary sources for ancient Celtic Europe and early Ireland & Wales, 4th ed. (Aberystwyth: Celtic Studies Publications, 2003). pp. 194 - 201
Dooley, Ann and Harry Roe (trans.), Tales of the Elders of Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999)
Flahive, Joseph J., The Fenian Cycle in Irish and Scots-Gaelic Literature (Cork: Cork Studies in Celtic Literatures, 2016)
Gunderloch, Anja 'John Francis Campbell, William Robertson and the collection of fianaigheachd tales and ballads in nineteenth-century Scotland', in The Gaelic Finn Tradition II, ed. by Arbuthnot et al. (Dublin, 2022)
MacDougall, J., (ed. and trans.). 'Mar Bha Fionn 'an Tigh a' Bhlàir-Bhuidhe gun Chomas Éiridh no Luidhe', Waifs and Strays of Celtic Tradition Vol. 3 (London: David Nutt, 1891), pp. 56 - 72
Macpherson James, The Poems of Ossian and Related Works, ed. Howard Gaskill (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996)
Mathis, Kate Louise and Eleanor Thomson, '"Our poetry never lacks clearness if read in Gaelic": Demystifying Gaelic and Anglo-Highland Women's Writing in the Celtic Revival', Scottish Literary Review 14.1 (2022), 1 - 41
McCone, Kim, Pagan Past and Christian Present in Early Irish Literature (Maynooth: Department of Old Irish, NUI Maynooth, 1990) - Chapter 1, pp. 1 - 28; Chapter 9, pp. 203 - 232
Mac Neill, Eóin, (ed. and trans.), 'The Boyhood of Fionn', Duanaire Finn: Part 1 (London: Irish Texts Society, 1908) - pp. 33 - 34 (text) ; pp. 133 - 134 (translation)
Meek, Donald E., 'The Sublime Gal: The Impact of Macpherson's Ossian on Literary Creativity and Cultural Perception in Gaelic Scotland', in Howard Gaskill (ed.), The Reception of Ossian in Europe (London: Thoemmes Continuum, 2004), pp. 40 - 66
Meyer, Kuno (ed.), 'Macgnímartha Find', Revue Celtique 5 (1882): 195 - 204, 508
Meyer, Kuno, Revue Celtique 25 (1904), pp. 344-349
Murphy, Gerard, (ed. and trans.), 'The Lay of the Smithy', Duanaire Finn: Part 2 (London: Irish Texts Society. 1933), pp. 2 - 15
Nagy, Joseph Falaky, The Wisdom of the Outlaw: the boyhood deeds of Finn in Gaelic narrative (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985)
Nagy, Joseph Falaky, 'The significance of the Duanaire Finn', in John Carey (ed.), Duanaire Finn: Reassessments (London: Irish Texts Society, 2003), pp. 39 - 50
Ní Shéaghdha, Nessa (ed. and trans.) Tóruigheacht Dhiarmada agus Ghráinne: The Pursuit of Diarmaid and Gráinne (Dublin: Irish Texts Society), 1967
Parsons, Geraldine, 'The structure of Acallam na Senórach', in Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies, 55 (2008), pp. 11 - 39
Pethica, James, 'The Irish literary revival', in DeMaria, Robert et al., A companion to British literature (Oxford: Blackwell Companions, 2014), pp. 160-74
Ross, Neil, (ed. and trans.), 'Bàs Dhiarmaid'', in Heroic Poetry from the Book of the Dean of Lismore (Edinburgh: Scottish Gaelic Texts Society 1939), pp. 70 - 77
Natasha Sumner. 2018. 'Diarmaid and Gráinne in Oral Tradition.' in Kevin Murray (ed.), Tóruigheacht Dhiarmada agus Ghráinne: Reassessments, (London: Irish Texts Society, 2018), pp. 107 - 158.
Zall, Carol, 'Mar a Chuala Mi - Remembering and Telling Gaelic Stories: A Study of Brian Stewart' PhD dissertation (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh, 1998), pp. 422-424
Recommended
Breatnach, Caoimhín , 'Transmission and text of Toruigheacht Dhiarmada agus Ghrainne: a re-appraisal', in 'The Gaelic Finn Tradition', ed. by Arbuthnot et al. (Dublin, 2012)., pp. 139 - 150
Carey, John, 'The Death of Diarmaid: Pessinus to Ben Bulben?', in 'The Gaelic Finn Tradition II, ed. by Arbuthnot et al. (Dublin, 2022), pp. 126 - 139
Mahon, William, J, 'Gaeltacht autobiographies' in John T. Koch et al. (eds), Celtic Culture : A Historical Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara, 2006), pp. 781 - 783
Maier, Bernhard 'Late Victorian ideas about Ossian and the origins of Celtic Studies in Scotland and Germany', in 'The Gaelic Finn Tradition II', ed. by Arbuthnot et al. (Dublin, 2022), pp. 187 - 196
Meek, Donald E.
'Duanaire Finn and Gaelic Scotland', in John Carey (ed.), Duainaire Finn: Reassessments (London: Irish Texts Society, 2003), pp. 19 - 38
Murray, Kevin, The Early Finn Cycle (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2017)
Murray, Kevin, The Early Fenian Corpus (Cork: Cork Studies in Celtic Literatures, 2021)
Philip O'Leary, 'The Irish Renaissance, 1880-1940: literature in Irish' in Margaret Kelleher & Philip O'Leary (eds), The Cambridge History of Irish Literature, Volume 2, (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 226 - 269
Ó Fiannachta, Pádraig (ed.), An Fhiannaíocht (Maynooth: An Sagart, 1995)
Toner, Greg, 'The dating of the Acallam', in The Gaelic Finn Tradition II, ed. by Arbuthnot et al. (Dublin, 2022), pp. 15 - 23/ |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Research and enquiry
In the assessed work for this course, students will need to identify and evaluate options to solve problems, analyse complex primary texts in a range of genres and respond criticially to existing scholarship and scholarly paradigms.
Personal and intellectual autonomy
Students will develop their capacity for creativity and inventive thinking, especially those students who decide to do a performance of a heroic ballad or folk tale for their archive project (researching and practising tunes, traditional performance style etc.). Similarly, they will develop important transferable skills in individual research in finding and selecting sources, taking relevant information from them and synthesising them in the development of an argument.
Personal effectiveness
As assessment is continuous throughout the course, students will develop their skills in project management - prioritising, planning research and using resources effectively for defined goals.
Communication
Students will develop their written and oral communication skills through the coursework and assessments. They will practise the written communication of ideas in the essay, textual commentary and reflective writeup of the archive report. These all have different purposes, and will require students to develop ideas, to focus on details of a given text and to express their personal experiences of working with archive materials. Oral communication will likewise take different forms. Primarily this will be through class discussion, but the students will also deliver either a spoken presentation or a performance of a folk tale or heroic ballad, so will develop their skills in delivering (in one of a range of forms) either a sustained oral argument or a form of oral art they have researched in our archive collections. They will be given feedback across all of these on how effectively they do so and how they can improve. |
| Keywords | Gaelic,Irish,medieval,literature,mythology,folklore,legend,Ossian,Celtic,saga,tradition |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Duncan Sneddon
Tel: (0131 6)50 3623
Email: dsneddo4@exseed.ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Ms Sheila Strathdee
Tel: (0131 6)50 3619
Email: S.Strathdee@ed.ac.uk |
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