Bibliography
Marc Caball
s. xx–xxi
Caball
Works authored
Caball, Marc, Poets and politics: reaction and continuity in Irish poetry, 1558-1625, Cork: Cork University Press, 1998.
abstract:
This book examines responses of the influential elite of Irish bardic poets known as fileadha to questions of political, cultural and religious change in late sixteenth-century and early seventeenth-century Ireland. In the absence of Gaelic administrative records, historians of early modern Ireland are fortunate to be able to draw upon a relatively large range of literary material in Irish from which to reconstruct contemporary mentalites, and more particularly to investigate the nature of Gaelic reaction to the English crown's conquest and colonisation of the island. During this period of critical change and unparalleled upheaval, the scene was set for a series of historical developments whose impact continues to reverberate today. The bardic poets initiated a process of ideological re-evaluation which redefined indigenous commununal notions of ethnicity, culture and religion. Modern scholarship has largely depicted the bardic elite as a static, intellectual phenomenon, uncomprehending in the face of early modern English aggrandisement. In this study, an interpretative distinction is made between the formal bardic professional apparatus, which was conventional and formulaic in expression and outlook, and the influence of a modern, innovative dynamic evident in the work of some poets. While the continuity of the bardic tradition is acknowledged, this book highlights significant elements of intellectual and cultural reappraisal in bardic poetry of the period. The author demonstrates how two revolutionary concepts, those of faith and fatherland and the merger of Gaelic and Old English identities in a common Irish nationality, are developed by fileadha or by poets from a bardic background. It has become an axiom of Celtic scholarship to view James VI and I's reign as the point of termination for the bardic tradition and by extension aristocratic Gaelic literary culture. Such thinking is challenged in the present study. It is more correct to speak of a fundamental refocusing of the cultural and social assumptions underlying Gaelic poetry. The continued vitality of themes first broached by bardic poets in the work of a new generation of non-professional gentlemen poets testifies to the modernisation of a medieval elite.
(source: Cork University Press)
abstract:
This book examines responses of the influential elite of Irish bardic poets known as fileadha to questions of political, cultural and religious change in late sixteenth-century and early seventeenth-century Ireland. In the absence of Gaelic administrative records, historians of early modern Ireland are fortunate to be able to draw upon a relatively large range of literary material in Irish from which to reconstruct contemporary mentalites, and more particularly to investigate the nature of Gaelic reaction to the English crown's conquest and colonisation of the island. During this period of critical change and unparalleled upheaval, the scene was set for a series of historical developments whose impact continues to reverberate today. The bardic poets initiated a process of ideological re-evaluation which redefined indigenous commununal notions of ethnicity, culture and religion. Modern scholarship has largely depicted the bardic elite as a static, intellectual phenomenon, uncomprehending in the face of early modern English aggrandisement. In this study, an interpretative distinction is made between the formal bardic professional apparatus, which was conventional and formulaic in expression and outlook, and the influence of a modern, innovative dynamic evident in the work of some poets. While the continuity of the bardic tradition is acknowledged, this book highlights significant elements of intellectual and cultural reappraisal in bardic poetry of the period. The author demonstrates how two revolutionary concepts, those of faith and fatherland and the merger of Gaelic and Old English identities in a common Irish nationality, are developed by fileadha or by poets from a bardic background. It has become an axiom of Celtic scholarship to view James VI and I's reign as the point of termination for the bardic tradition and by extension aristocratic Gaelic literary culture. Such thinking is challenged in the present study. It is more correct to speak of a fundamental refocusing of the cultural and social assumptions underlying Gaelic poetry. The continued vitality of themes first broached by bardic poets in the work of a new generation of non-professional gentlemen poets testifies to the modernisation of a medieval elite.
(source: Cork University Press)
Works edited
Contributions to journals
Caball, Marc, “Aspects of sixteenth-century élite Gaelic mentalities : A case-study”, Études Celtiques 32 (1996): 203–216.
abstract:
[FR] La mise-en-scène narrative de Baile Chuinn Chétchathaig.
Grâce au témoignage d’une série d’autres textes en vieil et moyen irlandais, il est possible de reconstruire les grandes lignes d’une légende perdue d’après laquelle le texte de Baile Chuinn Chéchathaig (L’extase de Conn-aux-Cent-Batailles) fut révélé à Conn roi de Tara durant un séjour dans l’Autre monde. Des parallèles moyen gallois montrent que cette légende reflète un type de conte commun aux Celtes de Grande-Bretagne et d’ Irlande. En conclusion, l’auteur démontre que ce type de conte a aussi inspiré les romans du Graal en vieux français.
[EN] On the evidence of a range of other Old and Middle Irish texts, it is possible to reconstruct the outlines of a lost tale according to which the prophecy Baile Chuinn Chétchathaig (The Frenzy of Conn-of-the-Hundred-Battles) was revealed to Conn king of Tara during a visit to the Otherworld. Middle Welsh comparanda indicate that this tale reflected a story type common to the Celts of Britain and Ireland. In conclusion, the author argues that this story type also inspired the Old French Grail romances.
Grâce au témoignage d’une série d’autres textes en vieil et moyen irlandais, il est possible de reconstruire les grandes lignes d’une légende perdue d’après laquelle le texte de Baile Chuinn Chéchathaig (L’extase de Conn-aux-Cent-Batailles) fut révélé à Conn roi de Tara durant un séjour dans l’Autre monde. Des parallèles moyen gallois montrent que cette légende reflète un type de conte commun aux Celtes de Grande-Bretagne et d’ Irlande. En conclusion, l’auteur démontre que ce type de conte a aussi inspiré les romans du Graal en vieux français.
[EN] On the evidence of a range of other Old and Middle Irish texts, it is possible to reconstruct the outlines of a lost tale according to which the prophecy Baile Chuinn Chétchathaig (The Frenzy of Conn-of-the-Hundred-Battles) was revealed to Conn king of Tara during a visit to the Otherworld. Middle Welsh comparanda indicate that this tale reflected a story type common to the Celts of Britain and Ireland. In conclusion, the author argues that this story type also inspired the Old French Grail romances.
Persée – Études Celtiques, vol. 32, 1996: <link>
abstract:
[FR] La mise-en-scène narrative de Baile Chuinn Chétchathaig.
Grâce au témoignage d’une série d’autres textes en vieil et moyen irlandais, il est possible de reconstruire les grandes lignes d’une légende perdue d’après laquelle le texte de Baile Chuinn Chéchathaig (L’extase de Conn-aux-Cent-Batailles) fut révélé à Conn roi de Tara durant un séjour dans l’Autre monde. Des parallèles moyen gallois montrent que cette légende reflète un type de conte commun aux Celtes de Grande-Bretagne et d’ Irlande. En conclusion, l’auteur démontre que ce type de conte a aussi inspiré les romans du Graal en vieux français.
[EN] On the evidence of a range of other Old and Middle Irish texts, it is possible to reconstruct the outlines of a lost tale according to which the prophecy Baile Chuinn Chétchathaig (The Frenzy of Conn-of-the-Hundred-Battles) was revealed to Conn king of Tara during a visit to the Otherworld. Middle Welsh comparanda indicate that this tale reflected a story type common to the Celts of Britain and Ireland. In conclusion, the author argues that this story type also inspired the Old French Grail romances.
Grâce au témoignage d’une série d’autres textes en vieil et moyen irlandais, il est possible de reconstruire les grandes lignes d’une légende perdue d’après laquelle le texte de Baile Chuinn Chéchathaig (L’extase de Conn-aux-Cent-Batailles) fut révélé à Conn roi de Tara durant un séjour dans l’Autre monde. Des parallèles moyen gallois montrent que cette légende reflète un type de conte commun aux Celtes de Grande-Bretagne et d’ Irlande. En conclusion, l’auteur démontre que ce type de conte a aussi inspiré les romans du Graal en vieux français.
[EN] On the evidence of a range of other Old and Middle Irish texts, it is possible to reconstruct the outlines of a lost tale according to which the prophecy Baile Chuinn Chétchathaig (The Frenzy of Conn-of-the-Hundred-Battles) was revealed to Conn king of Tara during a visit to the Otherworld. Middle Welsh comparanda indicate that this tale reflected a story type common to the Celts of Britain and Ireland. In conclusion, the author argues that this story type also inspired the Old French Grail romances.
Contributions to edited collections or authored works
Caball, Marc, “Transforming tradition in the British Atlantic: Patrick Browne (c.1720–90), an Irish botanist and physician in the West Indies”, in: John Cunningham (ed.), Early Modern Ireland and the world of medicine: practitioners, collectors and contexts, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019. 211–231.
Caball, Marc, “The Bible in early modern Gaelic Ireland: tradition, collaboration and alienation”, in: Kevin Killeen, Helen Smith, and Rachel Willie (eds), The Oxford handbook of the Bible in early modern England, c. 1530–1700, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. 332–349.
abstract:
The episodic production of an Irish translation of the Bible from the 1560s to its completion in 1685 is emblematic of the complexity of the political, religious, and cultural history of early modern Ireland. As late as the printing of the Irish Book of Common Prayer in 1608, Gaelic Irishmen were central to the project of evangelization through print. Yet the deployment of print was essentially an expression of state authority which privileged the use of English. This chapter explores the Reformation in Ireland, and the first printings of the New and Old Testaments in Gaelic. It traces Robert Boyle’s sponsorship of the republication of the New Testament in 1681 and Old Testament in 1685, and his support for the distribution of the Gaelic Bible in Scotland. Emphasizing the vigour of Gaelic literary culture, the chapter points to the need for further research into the reception of the Irish Bible.
abstract:
The episodic production of an Irish translation of the Bible from the 1560s to its completion in 1685 is emblematic of the complexity of the political, religious, and cultural history of early modern Ireland. As late as the printing of the Irish Book of Common Prayer in 1608, Gaelic Irishmen were central to the project of evangelization through print. Yet the deployment of print was essentially an expression of state authority which privileged the use of English. This chapter explores the Reformation in Ireland, and the first printings of the New and Old Testaments in Gaelic. It traces Robert Boyle’s sponsorship of the republication of the New Testament in 1681 and Old Testament in 1685, and his support for the distribution of the Gaelic Bible in Scotland. Emphasizing the vigour of Gaelic literary culture, the chapter points to the need for further research into the reception of the Irish Bible.
Caball, Marc, “An cultúr, an pholaitíocht agus an fhéiniúlacht in Éirinn sa séú haois déag: fianaise Thaidhg Daill Uí Uiginn (c.1550-1591)”, in: Liam Mac Amhlaigh, and Brian Ó Curnáin (eds), Ilteangach, ilseiftiúil: féilscríbhinn in ómós do Nicholas Williams = A festschrift in honour of Nicholas Williams, Dublin: Arlen House, 2012. 217–240.
In reference works
McGuire, James [ed.], and James Quinn [ed.], Dictionary of Irish biography, online ed., Online: Royal Irish Academy, Cambridge University Press, 2009–present. URL: <https://www.dib.ie>.
Contributions: Ó hUiginn, Tadhg Óg· Ó hUiginn, Tadhg Dall· Haicéad, Pádraigín [Patrick Hackett]
Oxford dictionary of national biography, Online: Oxford University Press, 2004–present. URL: <http://www.oxforddnb.com>.
comments: General editors include Lawrence Goldman, et al.
