The other Hercules of his time: Classical identities in Early Modern Irish political poetry

Abstract

During the later Middle Ages and Early Modern period, formal and formalized elegiac verse bardic poetry was the predominant medium of political discourse for Gaelic and Gaelicized elites in Ireland. The tumultuous sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw poets increasingly drawing inspiration from other contemporary European literatures as well as Classical epic and mythography (usually mediated through existing vernacular adaptations of Latin works). Bardic poets in this period were especially interested in the Trojan war, and while they frequently drew comparisons between Ireland and Troy, they never claimed direct descent from the Trojans, unlike their English neighbours. Instead, early medieval doctrines which saw the origin of the Gaels among the Greeks, persisted in the political verse of this period. In this talk, I propose to discuss where and how poets identified their patrons with the great heroes of the Classical past (alongside or perhaps instead of invocations of a patrons’ heroic genealogy or similar comparisons with Biblical and other traditions), and to explore some of the questions of identity ethnic, religious, and national which such comparisons and allusions raise.