Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Map of the Irish Sea and Northern Sea Area c. 1000–1200 CE
- Preface
- Introduction: Manannán and His Neighbors
- 1 Hiberno-Manx Coins in the Irish Sea
- 2 Hunferth and Incitement in Beowulf
- 3 Cú Chulainn Unbound
- 4 Ragnhild Eiríksdóttir: Cross-cultural Sovereignty Motifs and Anti-feminist Rhetoric in Chapter 9 of Orkneyinga saga
- 5 Statius’ Dynamic Absence in the Narrative Frame of the Middle Irish Togail na Tebe
- 6 The Stanley Family and the Gawain Texts of the Percy Folio
- 7 Ancient Myths for the Modern Nation: Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf
- 8 Kohlberg Explains Cú Chulainn: Developing Moral Judgment from Bully to Boy Wonder to Brave Warrior
- 9 Language Death and Language Revival: Contrasting Manx and Texas German
- Index
5 - Statius’ Dynamic Absence in the Narrative Frame of the Middle Irish Togail na Tebe
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Map of the Irish Sea and Northern Sea Area c. 1000–1200 CE
- Preface
- Introduction: Manannán and His Neighbors
- 1 Hiberno-Manx Coins in the Irish Sea
- 2 Hunferth and Incitement in Beowulf
- 3 Cú Chulainn Unbound
- 4 Ragnhild Eiríksdóttir: Cross-cultural Sovereignty Motifs and Anti-feminist Rhetoric in Chapter 9 of Orkneyinga saga
- 5 Statius’ Dynamic Absence in the Narrative Frame of the Middle Irish Togail na Tebe
- 6 The Stanley Family and the Gawain Texts of the Percy Folio
- 7 Ancient Myths for the Modern Nation: Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf
- 8 Kohlberg Explains Cú Chulainn: Developing Moral Judgment from Bully to Boy Wonder to Brave Warrior
- 9 Language Death and Language Revival: Contrasting Manx and Texas German
- Index
Summary
Abstract
Classicist Stephen Kershner, using the lens of Statius and the tradition of Roman epic, finds meaningful patterns in what the medieval Irish translator of the Thebaid kept and didn't keep of the Roman poet's sensitive framing of the story of the Seven against Thebes. In simultaneously embracing and distancing itself from its Latin source, this Middle Irish text reveals the long-lasting impact of Statius on the literature of early Ireland, Britain, and the Western Middle Ages in general.
Keywords: Statius’ Thebaid, Togail na Tebe, medieval reception of Classical literature, translation, narrative frame
“Harry,” said Basil looking him in the face, “every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself. The reason I will not exhibit this picture is that I am afraid that I have shown in it the secret of my soul.”
—Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian GrayFor scholars of Statius’ Thebaid, the Roman retelling of the very old “Seven against Thebes” saga, the Togail na Tebe (The destruction of Thebes), a Middle Irish prose adaptation of Thebaid, has long seemed to be a case of eccentric medieval nachleben. Classicists, like W.B. Stanford in his Ireland and the Classical Tradition, have commonly viewed Togail na Tebe and similar works—i.e. Togail Troí (The destruction of Troy), Riss in Mundtuirc (The tale of the necklace), In Cath Catharda (The civil war), Imtheachta Aeniasa (The adventures of Aeneas), Merugud Uilixes mac Leirtis (The wandering of Ulysses son of Laertes), et al.—as “flights of fancy” or “spates of rhetoric,” neither characterization particularly positive when speaking of Classical poetry. Yet the fruits of two recent scholarly movements—one in Classical Studies, the other in Celtic Studies—suggest that a more appreciative and nuanced assessment of the relationship between Statius’ Thebaid and Togail na Tebe is both possible and necessary. From the mid-eighteenth century until the last few decades, Classics scholars assessed Statius as inferior to his poetic peers, a view summed up clearly in H.E. Butler's opinion in 1909 that Statius is a superficial poet of the second rank and J.H. Mozley's comment that Statius’ “inequality as a poet is hardly necessary to speak [of].”
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Medieval Cultures of the Irish Sea and the North SeaManannán and his Neighbors, pp. 99 - 122Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2019