ITS-SS2 The Contention of the Bards (Iomarbhágh na bhFileadh) and its place in Irish Political and Literary History

Cur síos

72 pp. 1994. ISBN 1 870 16681 7

Joep Leerssen, Professor of European Studies at the University of Amsterdam , has made a significant contribution to the study of Irish literature in the seventeenth century. Here, in a detailed literary historical analysis, he presents the poems comprising the Contention of the Bards, originally edited for the Society by Lambert McKenna (Main Series 20-21), as much more than a final display of bardic erudition and eloquence. He views the Contention as a unique registration of an ancient tradition coming to terms with the disintegration of both its social raison d’être and its cultural Weltanschauung.