Vernacular Becomes Classical: Greek and Celtic Perspectives on Poems and Manuscripts

The starting-point is the strange fact that the presentation of poetry in medieval Irish manuscripts physically resembles that seen in Byzantine Greek manuscripts (e.g. those of Lycophron) much more closely than one would expect. I take as a case study the mysterious Old Irish poem Am gaeth i mmuir "I am a wind upon the sea", and explore issues concerning metaphor, metonymy, and riddling obscurity that are raised by the poem and answered in the commentary materials in the surviving manuscripts. This will be considered as an unusually early example of the transformation of a vernacular into a "new book language", to use the terminology developed by Lars Boje Mortensen for parallel developments in Norse, Old French, and other languages. 

This event is organized through a collaboration between Greek Studies and the Celtic Section at Uppsala University, hosted at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study. Organizers: Eric Cullhed (Ancient Greek, Uppsala University) and Gregory Darwin (Celtic Section, Uppsala University).

Mark your calendars, we look forward to seeing you there!

Best regards,

Eric and Greg