ITS-SS4 A New Introduction to Buile Suibhne (The Frenzy of Suibhne) being The Adventures of Suibhne Geilt – A Middle Irish Romance

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32 pp. 1996. ISBN 1 870 16683 3. Joseph Falaky Nagy.

As is well known, the adventures of Suibhne Geilt (the madman), which were edited for the Society by J. G. O’Keeffe (Main Series 12), have inspired such modern writers as Flann O’Brien and Seamus Heaney. In his illuminating new introduction to the tale, Professor Joseph Nagy of the University of California, Los Angeles, takes Suibhne to represent a poet ‘robbed of his identity, his autonomy, and his freedom from the tyranny of words’. Taking account throughout of previous scholarship on the subject, Professor Nagy examines Suibhne’s remarkable story as that of a poet vacillating ‘between power and powerlessness’.