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This module introduces the students to different types of so-called heroic literature from sources relating to the Ancient Celtic Continent, to Medieval Ireland and Wales, and to High Medieval European courts. On the one hand, heroic literature comprises texts that relate to warrior-dominated societies (e.g. classical accounts about ancient Gauls, the Welsh Gododdin, or the Ulster cycle), but at the same time it also can mean tales that contain narrative motifs that form part of the ‘International Heroic Biography’, and which are thus inherently fictional. Exemplary heroic figures in the early Irish (e.g., Cormac mac Airt, Cú Chulainn) and the British literary tradition (e.g., Pryderi, King Arthur) will be studied in the light of international heroic biographical models. It will be critically evaluated if there is something unifyingly ‘Celtic’ in these accounts and narratives, or if they are better studied as manifestations of universal ideological patterns typical of chieftain societies.
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THE CELTIC HEROIC AGE
