...LITERATURE OF THE OLD ENGLISH AND THE OLD IRISH PERIODS (600-1100 A.D.) 1- OLD ENGLISH HISTORY AND LANGUAGE Initial literatures are spoken and that oral literature have been many amplifications, later appear the texts. Beowulf was oral first and then became written. There are lots of fragments written literally. Some texts were lost and now we only have fragments. These texts are writing in manuscripts, there weren’t books in that period. In particular there are four manuscripts that contain most of English literature: Cotton Vitelius, Exeter Book, Junius Manuscript and Vercelli Manuscript; they are from 10th century. However the poetry and the texts contain the literature from 9th century, but they originated in 7th century orally (all of them originated orally before they appear written). That manuscripts tell some things about the society of this period of time, so we know details of this century. This period is the Anglo-Saxon period, before them there were the Britons who were invaded by some different people. They spoke different dialects of old English, the stronger kingdom was Wessex, which dialect was the most important and it called “west saxon”. Beowulf was writing in this dialect. In 597 appeared the Christianization. This means that the English became Christian, it became familiar with the church language: Latin. Latin is the culture language. The entry of Christianity is the entry of the culture in Britain. 2- WRITTEN RECORDS OF THE ANGLOSAXON PERIOD ...
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...are becoming more aware of effective tactics to move closer towards finding a resolution and are working to the best of their ability to achieve such a thing. Peace building and reconciliation have more recently been sought after as tools for achieving a peaceful Ireland. The definitions of both actions though are sometimes defined differently based on an individuals beliefs and background, which could be one flaw in the resolution process for Northern Ireland. According to Hamber and Kelly, peace building is seen differently than peace making. Peace making is simply coming to some form of mutual agreement on a matter and moving forward from there. Peace making, however, has been tried numerous times in Ireland’s past including the Anglo-Irish Treaty, Government of Ireland Act of 1920 and even the Home Rule Act. These truces were put into affect but in the end did not create much of a difference. Peace building is a different approach from the peace making process in regards to the fact that it’s more about turning things into a process, and finding the root of the problem and then addressing causes from there. Reconciliation can also put alongside the definition of peace building, as reconciliation looks to that process of addressing conflicted and broken relationships. It’s a procedure, which involves acknowledging and dealing with the past, building...
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...political and religious change, and that different areas were affected by different factors. Introduction This dissertation will assess the extent to which ancient beliefs and practices survived the introduction of Christianity and their subsequent development in England. This will be achieved through the study of visual culture; the survival of ancient practices; and an investigation into superstition and the changing acceptance of witchcraft. Visual Culture will be used to group together several different areas, for instance knot work and grotesques in architecture and manuscripts. Other artefacts such as The Franks Casket will also be investigated. Ancient culture will be defined as an umbrella term covering everything from pagan or Anglo-Saxon festivals to...
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...University School of Religion and Theology SUMMARY AND ELEMENTS OF CHRISTIANITY AND PAGANISM IN THE LITERATURE OF GREAT BRITAIN BEFORE THE NORMAN CONQUEST An Assignment Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Course, ENGL 245: Survey of English Lit. I by Lascelles James October 2007 Even though archeology reveals a lot about the Neolithic and Iron-Age era in Britain, Literature tells more about the life and culture in the region, especially after the coming of Germanic Indo-Europeans from the continent in A.D 449, as reported in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. England, then a province of the Roman Empire, was named Britannia after its Celtic-speaking inhabitants, the Britons. The Britons were actually Romanized Celts. They left their greatest linguistic legacy in place names, such as Avon, Dover, Thames, and probably London. [1] The Anglo-Saxon invaders brought with them their own tradition of oral poetry, but there is no evidence of literacy before their conversion to Christianity. There is only circumstantial evidence of what the poetry must have been like. Aside from a few short inscriptions on small artifacts, the earliest records in the English language are in manuscripts produced at monasteries and other religious establishments, beginning in the seventh century. Literacy was mainly restricted to servants of the church, and the bulk of Old English literature is religious with Latin origins. As literate culture...
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...only journey around Ireland in May 1934. For her descriptions of the landscape and the people she met (mainly the Anglo-Irish gentry) are as ambivalent as her now infamous reading of James Joyce’s Ulysses. But Woolf’s response to Ireland, and more particularly to Irish writing is only part of the story. As a contemporary, how was Woolf read in Ireland, if she was read at all, and what, if any, impact has she had on Irish writing? For the contemplation of “Virginia Woolf in Ireland,” both as a traveler and a reader of Irish culture, politics and literature, and as someone to be read through her various publications, provokes a proliferation of research possibilities about both writer and country. In this essay I wish to sketch out a preliminary map of these possibilities, showing some of the potentially complex and intriguing routes that require further exploration, in relation to Woolf studies, in particular the European Reception of Woolf, and in relation to Ireland and its own literary history. So the paper is divided into three sections: briefly, Virginia Woolf literally in Ireland, reading Virginia Woolf in Ireland from the 1920s on, and three Irish women reading Woolf–Elizabeth Bowen, Mary Lavin and Edna O’Brien.1 Woolf’s interest in Ireland before and after her visit there is evident from her diaries, letters and fiction. Her concern and knowledge about Irish affairs2 emerges most forcefully in the novel The Years, where, as Jane Marcus points out, “The theme of the search...
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...THIS is a brave and artful novel disguised to appear safe and conventional. One can read on for some time as if it were simply a ''terror stalks the high seas'' thriller, but one would be an uncommon fool to do so for very long. Joseph O'Connor, an Irish critic and playwright who is also the author of several previous novels, lures us into an easy read that, before we know it, becomes a chilling indictment not of a murderer but of us. As a London publisher says midway through the book, advising a writer unsuccessfully peddling his fiction, this is ''a good old thumping yarn,'' the sort of thing a reader can ''sink his tusks into.'' But ''Star of the Sea'' is also an agonizing inquiry into the nature of abandonment and the difficulty of finding anyone who will truly care about the fate of others. How large does suffering have to loom before we take notice? O'Connor suggests that we can tolerate mountains of misery, sipping our coffee and reading our newspapers as the corpses pile up beneath the headlines. The Star of the Sea is a leaky old tub sailing from Ireland to New York in the terrible winter of 1847, carrying in its staterooms a reluctantly intertwined collection of characters. The most noteworthy is an Irish aristocrat, David Merridith, Lord Kingscourt, whose Oxford training has shown him ''how to put on like a cheerful idiot'' while he's got his ''hands sliding around your neck.'' Merridith and his family are being stalked by a man named Pius Mulvey, who has been...
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...Fact and Fiction of Irish Americans History of the Immigration Beginning almost 300 years ago Irish immigrants were among the first large groups of people to migrate to the New World. With years of wars, famine, and religious persecution in Ireland, these people came to America to build a new life. Not afraid of hard work the Irish came and built a life they could be proud of; although the Irish American believes that they have been victim of discrimination. NINA ‘No Irish Need Apply’ and WASP ‘White Anglo Saxon Protestant’ is and ingrained belief that the Irish American’s “remember” (Jenson, 2004). Another current issue is the unjust treatment of the Irish seeking political asylum in the United States (McElrath, 1997). The first Irish immigrants came in the 1580s to the Carolinas long before the founding of the United States of America. It is believed that possibly hundreds of thousands of Protestant Irish immigrated in these early years. This is contrary to the urban myth of the Irish Catholic American origins (Meagher, 2009). The next big migration of Irish to America was in the 1700s to 1820s. These immigrants assimilated easily into the American way of life as most prospered at a rate that could not have been conceived in Ireland. “Nearly half of General Washington’s continental arm, including 1492 officers and 22 generals, were of Irish descent” (American Immigration law Foundation, 2001, p. 1). Even with the influx of Irish throughout early history of America...
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...and even Invention Tradition was a major aspect of Irish Nationalism What we know of history is only what we are told and shown. The idea of reviving and inventing tradition in Ireland shows us how history can be manipulated by its tellers in order to suit their cause. Inventing tradition as described by Eric Hobsbawm is ‘A set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past’ – Hobsbawm, Reading 5.1 p176, Tradition and Dissent. It also includes preserving or showing only specific aspects of a history that align with the individual or groups specific cause and encourages specific beliefs about the past that it wants people to have. The British conquest of Ireland was a gradual process which began in 1169, and by 1603 the whole of Ireland was under British rule. It was the belief of the Irish nationalists that Ireland should rule itself. After many years the Irish nationalists won independence from Britain in 1922. Reviving and Inventing tradition was important both prior to gaining this independence, and after gaining independence. Throughout the century prior to Ireland gaining its independence the nationalists were united in the goal to establish that the country of Ireland had a rich and ancient culture. Thomas Davis was an Irish Nationalist who lived from 1814 until 1845. He dedicated...
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... intelligent, capitalistic, civilized and superior. Caliban was portrayed as savage, uneducated, sensual, and overall inferior to Prospero. The English believe the Irish and Africans mirror Caliban and use that concept to justify the treatment of those groups. The English categorize the Irish as wild, living outside of civilization, tribal, nomadic, brutish, uneducated about God, no etiquette, lazy, idle, barbarous, and beastly. They used this Caliban ideology of the Irish to forbid them from purchasing land, bearing office, being a part of a jury, and marrying any colonizers. The English even took it as far as using violence against the Irish to teach them obedience and duty. The English described Africans much like the Irish in that they were wicked, foul, Brutish, uncivilized, sensual, beastly, without God, lacked manners, and only capable of manual labor. The English use this ideology to justify enslaving, humiliating, torturing, suppressing, and verbally abusing Africans. By belittling and suppressing “the other,” the racial belief that anyone not of English/White Anglo Saxon Protestant descent was uncivilized, savage-like, and they required taming. Q2- Takaki: The Irish came from a caste system in Ireland. They were regarded as the lowest form of humanity. Before immigration to America, the Irish in Ireland were extremely...
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...Irish Settlers in America The Irish immigrants faced prejudice, segregation, and discrimination. The Irish settlers are part of my heritage and the Ethnic group I chose for this essay. I had a very difficult time finding enough information for this assignment and I did not expect there to be so little information on this topic. I am not sure about the rest of my background but I have always been proud to be an Irish American descendent. That was until I read some of the ways they treated other immigrants in the new nation. Irish immigrants had a rough start in the United States, stuck in urban poverty and taunted by some of their neighbors. They and their descendants overcame the obstacles and prevailed (Kenny, 2008). Irish immigrants were not treated as bad as the African Americans were treated but were treated pretty closely. They did get a few extra benefits like being able to sell themselves as slaves instead of someone else selling you. As they arrived in American cities, they were crowded into districts that became centers of crime, vice, and disease and they commonly found themselves thrown together with free Negroes. Irish and African Americans fought each other and the police, socialized (and occasionally intermarried), and developed a common culture of the lowly (Barnett, Valla, and Williams). They also stated that ‘‘It is a curious fact,’’ wrote John Finch, an English Owenite who traveled the United States in 1843, ‘‘that the democratic party, and particularly...
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...(1729) Ahsan Chowdhury University of Alberta I. Cannibalism: Ethnic Defamation or a Trope of Liberation? In A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burthen to eir Parents and Country, and for Making em Beneficial to the Public () Swift exploits the age-old discourse of ethnic defamation against the Irish that had legitimated the English colonization of Ireland for centuries. One of the most damning elements in Swift’s use of this discourse is that of cannibalism. e discourse of ethnic defamation arose out of the Norman conquest of Ireland in the twelfth century. Clare Carroll points out that “the colonization of the Americas and the reformation as events … generated new discourses inflecting the inherited discourse of barbarism” in early-modern English writing about Ireland (). Narratives of native cannibalism were an indispensable part of these new discourses and practices. For the English authors as well as their continental counterparts, the cannibalistic other of the New World became a yardstick by which to measure the threat posed by internal enemies, be it the indigenous Irish, the French Catholics, or the Moorish inhabitants of Spain.¹ us, it was against the backdrop of the reforma Carroll demonstrates that while continental authors like Bartolomé de Las Casas and Jean de Léry could treat the Amerindians and their cannibalistic practices as being less alien than their respective domestic enemies the moors and...
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...by Liam O’Flaherty in 1923. The story is about The Irish Civil War taking place in Dublin in 1922. The war was between the Free Staters and the Republicans, who strongly disagreed about the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. Long story short the Free Staters were Irishmen who supported the treaty contrary to the Republicans who fanatically opposed. The Sniper is the main character and is on the Republicans’ side. The author is very detailed in his description of the sniper: ” a man who is used to looking at death”. Especially this phrase is very effective because it instantly gives the impression that he may have very cold looking eyes, thus he seems cold, careless and cynical. Also the quotations: “He had been too excited to eat.” and ”…but his eyes had the cold gleam of the fanatic” support this. The word excited’ suggests that he enjoys having the chance to fight. He seems very determined and devoted, which shows how personal this battle is. I think he sees himself as a true freedom-fighter and maybe even a hero. He is the one who doesn’t compromise. However deeper into the story, it is clear that that is not entirely the case: “The sniper looked at his enemy falling and he shuddered.” This shows that he is able to kill, although he does not enjoy doing it. The phrase: He began to gibber to himself, cursing himself, cursing everybody,” Here one gets the feeling that he starts to realize the bitter irony of Irish people fighting each other instead of continuing fighting...
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...established by Peel’s government in order to employed many Irish peasants were continuing to be adopted. Men, women, and even children were employed to improve old roads and build new ones. Many of the workers, who did not have the money to afford proper winter clothes and were malnourished or suffered from various illnesses, fainted and died right on the spot. These people were so poor, especially in the southern counties of the island, that they were buried without coffins (“The Great Hunger”). In January 1847, since this laissez-faire policy proved to be a complete disaster, the government abandoned it and, under the direction of the Prime Minister Russell, the priority became to keep the people alive. The Soup Kitchen Act of 1847 aimed to provide free food through soup kitchens, which were financed by the taxes collected by local relief committees from Irish landowners and merchants. However, since Ireland was going bankrupt,...
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...In 1840 he became Assistant Secretary to the Treasury in London and held that office until 1859. This position put him in charge of the administration of Government relief to the victims of the Irish Famine in the 1840s. In the middle of that crisis Trevelyan published his views on the matter. He saw the Famine as a ‘mechanism for reducing surplus population’. But it was more: ‘The judgement of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson, that calamity must not be too much mitigated. …The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people’. Such racist and sectarian views of the Irish were common enough within the English governing classes and were more crudely expressed by others. For the most part, Trevelyan’s views reflected the prevailing Whig economic and social opinion and that of the Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, who held office from 1846 until 1852. Trevelyan was stiff and unbending. He firmly believed in laissez faire (essentially, the importing of food should be left to the food merchants), he thought that the Government should not intervene, and warned of the danger that people might get into the habit of depending on the state. From March 1846 he controlled the public works through the disbursement of public funds. Under Trevelyan, relief by public works in 1846–7 was too little too late but also it was slow, inefficient and sometimes corrupt...
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...I have chosen Dublin, Ireland as my destination choice. I chose this place because I’m part Irish and I’ve always wanted to visit. I think there would be many cool things to do and see in and around Dublin. “Celtic tribes arrived on the island between 600 and 150 B.C. Invasions by Norsemen that began in the late 8th century were finally ended when King Brian BORU defeated the Danes in 1014. English invasions began in the 12th century and set off more than seven centuries of Anglo-Irish struggle marked by fierce rebellions and harsh repressions. A failed 1916 Easter Monday Rebellion touched off several years of guerrilla warfare that in 1921 resulted in independence from the UK for 26 southern counties; six northern (Ulster) counties remained part of the UK. In 1949, Ireland withdrew from the British Commonwealth; it joined the European Community in 1973. Irish governments have sought the peaceful unification of Ireland and have cooperated with Britain against terrorist groups. A peace settlement for Northern Ireland is gradually being implemented despite some difficulties. In 2006, the Irish and British governments developed and began to implement the St. Andrews Agreement, building on the Good Friday Agreement approved in 1998.” Ireland is located in Western Europe, occupying five-sixths of the island of Ireland in the North Atlantic Ocean, west of Great Britain. “Ireland has a mild, temperate climate with a mean annual temperature of around 50°F. Rain showers can occur at any...
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