Spring 2015: 170

Topics in Celtic Studies
“Folklore, Literature, and Irish National Culture”

4 units
MWF 3-4
Visiting Professor Diurmaid Ó Giolláin

This course is cross-listed with Anthropology 162, Section 1

L&S Breadth: Arts & Literature

This course will discuss the 19th century concept of folklore and its application to Ireland, where it was largely framed by the cultural nationalist Gaelic Revival. Irish folklore has conventionally been understood in terms of three main and related domains: ‘oral narrative’, ideologically the most important, ‘folk custom and belief’, and ‘folk life’, in practice most often the documentation of material folk culture. Each of these will be examined and problematized in turn. Representative oral narrative texts will be studied in translation.

Texts:
Conrad M. Arensberg, The Irish Countryman (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland, 1988).
Diarmuid Ó Giolláin, Locating Irish Folklore. Tradition, Modernity, Identity (Cork: Cork University Press 2000).

Plus additional articles and papers as appropriate.

Prerequisites: None.