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Article: The shock of the old: translating early Irish poetry into Modern Irish.(Critical Essay)
- Article from:
- Eire-Ireland: a Journal of Irish Studies
- Article date:
- March 22, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 Irish American Cultural Institute. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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TWENTIETH-CENTURY readers of English without a knowledge of Old Irish (ca. 600-900 A.D.) or Middle Irish (ca. 900-1200 A.D.) were given reasonably good access to early medieval Irish poetry through the medium of the translation anthology. Through the efforts of Kuno Meyer, Robin Flower, Gerard Murphy, Frank O'Connor, and others, a good amount of early Irish verse written between the seventh and twelfth centuries was made available to English-language audiences. (1)
But what of translation of this poetry into Modern Irish? Who undertook this task, for what reasons, and to what effect? From the very beginnings of the Gaelic Literary Revival, there had been calls for ...