Literacy and Orality in Eighteenth-Century Irish Song
Julie Henigan
Poetry and Song in the Age of Revolution
978 1 84893 342 2: 234x156mm: £60.00/$99.00
978 1 84893 343 9
This study takes issue with the disputed but persistent notion of a dichotomy between the cultures (and even mentalities) of literate and oral societies. Focusing on several distinct genres of eighteenth-century Irish song, Henigan demonstrates in each case that the interaction between the elite and vernacular, the written and oral, is pervasive and characteristic of the Irish song tradition to the present day. Ultimately, she argues, it is neither literacy nor orality, but performance within community that most truly defines the tradition.
Readership
Literature, Song and Eighteenth-Century Ireland
Contents
Introduction
1 The Medieval Background
2 Songs of the Dispossessed: Eighteenth-Century Irish Song-Poetry
3 'Éirigh i do Sheasamh': Orality and Literary Aspects of the Irish Lament Tradition
4 'For Want of Education': The Songs of the Hedge Schoolmaster
5 The Eighteenth-Century Printed Ballad in Ireland