Book contents
- Technology in Irish Literature and Culture
- Cambridge Themes in Irish Literature and Culture
- Technology in Irish Literature and Culture
- Copyright page
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Contributors
- Cambridge Themes in Irish Literature and Culture
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I Genealogies
- Part II Infrastructures
- Part III Invention
- Chapter 8 Technology, Writing, and Place in Medieval Irish Literature
- Chapter 9 The Critique of Sola Scriptura in A Tale of a Tub and STEM in Gulliver’s Travels
- Chapter 10 Technology and Irish Modernism
- Chapter 11 W. B. Yeats, the Revival, and Scientific Invention
- Chapter 12 James Joyce, Irish Modernism, and Watch Technology
- Chapter 13 Technology, Terminology, and the Irish Language, Past and Present
- Part IV The Digital
- Index
- References
Chapter 8 - Technology, Writing, and Place in Medieval Irish Literature
from Part III - Invention
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 January 2023
Book contents
- Technology in Irish Literature and Culture
- Cambridge Themes in Irish Literature and Culture
- Technology in Irish Literature and Culture
- Copyright page
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Contributors
- Cambridge Themes in Irish Literature and Culture
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I Genealogies
- Part II Infrastructures
- Part III Invention
- Chapter 8 Technology, Writing, and Place in Medieval Irish Literature
- Chapter 9 The Critique of Sola Scriptura in A Tale of a Tub and STEM in Gulliver’s Travels
- Chapter 10 Technology and Irish Modernism
- Chapter 11 W. B. Yeats, the Revival, and Scientific Invention
- Chapter 12 James Joyce, Irish Modernism, and Watch Technology
- Chapter 13 Technology, Terminology, and the Irish Language, Past and Present
- Part IV The Digital
- Index
- References
Summary
A rich and varied corpus of written material has survived from medieval Ireland, much of it concerned with providing an extended account of Ireland’s past. Through the technology of writing, a constructed history was created in which the art of writing itself functioned as process and as theme. Inscriptions and manuscripts bear witness to the mechanics of writing, while the development of letters and language is explored in origin-stories in significant ways. The power of the word was important, but so was control of the landscape, ordering society, taming space. Land-clearing, building settlements, and refining tools form a prominent strand in the account of Ireland’s beginnings, particularly in medieval Irish narratives of place; how fire was mastered; when and why were mills introduced. In explaining the past and so shaping the present, the technology of writing presented a story of technologies of other kinds, a selection of which is presented in this chapter on technology, writing, and place in medieval Irish literature.
Keywords
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- Technology in Irish Literature and Culture , pp. 137 - 153Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023
References
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