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Gjesteforelesning

Foredrag av Ciaran McDonough

“The work of publishing the Brehon laws is the most important that Irish scholars could be engaged in”: The Ancient Laws and Institutes of Ireland and the afterlife of medieval Irish law

An extract from Bechbretha, TCD MS 1316/2, p. 25. Image courtesy of ISOS.
Foto/ill.:
An extract from Bechbretha, TCD MS 1316/2, p. 25. Image courtesy of ISOS.

Hovedinnhold

Torsdag 18. november kl. 10:00-11:30 har forskergruppen Lov og Kultur i det førmoderne nord gleden av å invitere gjesteforsker Ciaran McDonough til holde en forelesning for forskergruppen.

 

Abstract:

"The project to translate the corpus of medieval Irish law was the antiquarian project of the longest duration in nineteenth-century Ireland, running between 1853 and 1901. At its inception, the proposed legal translations were widely anticipated for their purported potential in unlocking the secrets of Ireland’s “ancient” past. At the publication of the first volume in the series in 1865, European Celticists celebrated the work for its philological value. Yet, early Irish law has held a special place in the popular imagination for what various non-scholarly authors have imagined society under these laws to have been. Tying in with the idea of a golden age, this frequently includes an egalitarian society with little gender disparity and, as such, means that the laws were imagined to provide an alternative justice which was denied through official channels.

 

This lecture will focus on the afterlife of medieval Irish law by discussing the genesis and production of the Ancient Laws and Institutes of Ireland and how this publication made the legal corpus more accessible for further use. It will begin with a brief overview of the medieval corpus before turning to previous attempts to translate the laws. The mid-nineteenth century will be discussed and will be set in the context of the pan-European phenomenon of medieval legal translations from around the same time period. The remainder of the presentation will examine how the publication and translation of the laws led to discussions about their contents and potential for use. This included Nationalist views about a potential law code for an imagined independent Ireland; a court case where early Irish law was invoked in the 1930s and 1940s; and a series of articles on early Irish land law in a Norwegian newspaper in the 1880s."

 

Send epost til ole-albert.nordby@uib.no dersom du er interessert i å bli med i forskergruppen.