The Mythological Cycle of Medieval Irish Literature

Cork Studies in Celtic Literatures

by John Carey

A striking feature of medieval Irish literature is the prominence accorded to beings who are sometimes called the 'Túatha Dé' (Tribes of the Gods), and sometimes the people of the síde or hollow a magical race, in whom it is possible to recognise the divinities once worshipped by the pre-Christian Irish. Tales in which the Túatha Dé have a central rôle have conventionally been assigned by scholars to a ‘mythological cycle’. This book examines the background and rationale for this classification; discusses the nature of the Túatha Dé themselves; and offers a survey of the tales of the Túatha Dé that are attested from the Old Irish, Middle Irish and Early Modern Irish periods.

79 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2018

About the author

John Carey is an American Celtic scholar, specialising in early Irish and Welsh literature, religion, and mythology. A graduate of Harvard University, he was an associate professor at the Department of Celtic Languages and Literature. He has received fellowships at Warburg Institute (University of London), the Institute of Irish Studies at Queen's University, Belfast and the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. He later moved to the Department of Early and Medieval Irish at University College Cork (UCC), where he now teaches. He is fellow at the Temenos Academy and editor of Temenos Academy Review.

Reviews

[Dianne Trautmann · Rating 2 out of 5]

I bought this book because it was on a suggested reading list in another book I read on Irish Myths. I was disappointed to find out that this book is an academic discussion of how to categorize the myths into groups, heavy on the footnotes. This is not a book for the general reader.