Overview

The Irish Classical Self considers the role of classical languages and learning in the construction of Irish cultural identities in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, focusing in particular on the ""lower ranks"" of society. This eighteenth century notion of the ""classical self"" grew partly out of influential identity narratives developed in the seventeenth century by clerics on the European continent: responding to influential critiques of the Irish as ignorant barbarians, they published works demonstrating the value and antiquity of indigenous culture and made traditional annalistic claims about the antiquity of Irish and connections between Ireland and the biblical and classical world broadly known. In the eighteenth century these and related ideas spread through Irish poetry, which demonstrated the complex and continuing interaction of languages in the country: a story of conflict, but also of communication and amity. The ""classical strain"" in the context of the non-elite may seem like an unlikely phenomenon but the volume exposes the truth in the legend of the classical hedge schools which offered tuition in Latin and Greek to poor students, for whom learning and claims to learning had particular meaning and power. This volume surveys official data on schools and scholars together with literary and other narratives, showing how the schools, inherently transgressive because of the Penal Laws, drove concerns about class and political loyalty and inspired seductive but contentious retrospectives. It demonstrates that classical interests among those ""in the humbler walks of life"" ran in the same channels as interests in Irish literature and contemporary Irish poetry and demands a closer look at the phenomenon in its entirety.

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9780191821295

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Reviews

""This book deserves a wide readership. Students of classical reception will value its total familiarity with the receiving context, its combination of �lite and non-�lite views, and its understanding of how Greek and Latin classics interacted with native Irish traditions. Historians of Ireland too should recognize O'Higgins' important contribution: beyond classical reception studies, she brings to light aspects of social and cultural history that historians who are not classically trained might have overlooked, or examined in less depth."" --Fiachra Mac G�r�in, Bryn Mawr Classical Review ""What O'Higgins has done is show how literate the Irish actually were and many still are, a useful task, when the British consistently considered them barbaric and needed the ""civilization"" they brought with them during their murderous occupation."" --Marianne McDonald, Arion ""It is to be hoped that Professor O'Higgins' volume reminds us of the many benefits which the classical disciplines timelessly confer, apart altogether from her monograph serving its own commendable ends."" --Neil Buttimer, Eighteenth-Century Ireland ""In short, this is a clearly articulated and well-argued book. ... perhaps the chief merit of this study resides in O'H.'s ability to maximise disparate sources, her careful scrutiny of relevant reports and censuses, and her thorough investigation of the nature and extent of Classical teaching in the period under discussion. As such this work should prove an indispensable resource to those interested in the Classical tradition, in Irish cultural history, in townlands and in the pedagogical methodologies of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Ireland."" --Estelle Haan, The Classical Review

"""This book deserves a wide readership. Students of classical reception will value its total familiarity with the receiving context, its combination of �lite and non-�lite views, and its understanding of how Greek and Latin classics interacted with native Irish traditions. Historians of Ireland too should recognize O'Higgins' important contribution: beyond classical reception studies, she brings to light aspects of social and cultural history that historians who are not classically trained might have overlooked, or examined in less depth."" --Fiachra Mac G�r�in, Bryn Mawr Classical Review ""What O'Higgins has done is show how literate the Irish actually were and many still are, a useful task, when the British consistently considered them barbaric and needed the ""civilization"" they brought with them during their murderous occupation."" --Marianne McDonald, Arion ""It is to be hoped that Professor O'Higgins' volume reminds us of the many benefits which the classical disciplines timelessly confer, apart altogether from her monograph serving its own commendable ends."" --Neil Buttimer, Eighteenth-Century Ireland ""In short, this is a clearly articulated and well-argued book. ... perhaps the chief merit of this study resides in O'H.'s ability to maximise disparate sources, her careful scrutiny of relevant reports and censuses, and her thorough investigation of the nature and extent of Classical teaching in the period under discussion. As such this work should prove an indispensable resource to those interested in the Classical tradition, in Irish cultural history, in townlands and in the pedagogical methodologies of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Ireland."" --Estelle Haan, The Classical Review"

Author Information

Laurie O'Higgins, Euterpe B. Dukakis Professor of Classical and Medieval Studies, Bates College Laurie O'Higgins was educated at Trinity College Dublin, and received her PhD in Classics from Cornell University. She teaches at Bates College in Maine, where she holds the position of Euterpe B. Dukakis Professor of Classical and Medieval Studies, and her research focuses particularly on the question of ""hearing"" the voices of non-elite men and women in the context of classical studies.

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