| The Severed Head and the Grafted Tongue: Literature, Translation and Violence in Early Modern Ireland Contributor(s): Palmer, Patricia (Author) |
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ISBN: 1107614708 ISBN-13: 9781107614703 Publisher: Cambridge University Press OUR PRICE: $39.89 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: May 2015 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh |
| Dewey: 809.933 |
| LCCN: 2013023230 |
| Physical Information: 0.42" H x 6" W x 9" (0.59 lbs) 196 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - British Isles |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Severed heads emblemise the vexed relationship between the aesthetic and the atrocious. During the Elizabethan conquest of Ireland, colonisers such as Edmund Spenser, Sir John Harington and Sir George Carew wrote or translated epic romances replete with beheadings even as they countenanced - or conducted - similar deeds on the battlefield. This study juxtaposes the archival record of actual violence with literary depictions of decapitation to explore how violence gets transcribed into art. Patricia Palmer brings the colonial world of Renaissance England face-to-face with Irish literary culture. She surveys a broad linguistic and geographical range of texts, from translations of Virgil's Aeneid to the Renaissance epics of Ariosto and Ercilla and makes Irish-language responses to conquest and colonization available in readable translations. In doing so, she offers literary and political historians access not only to colonial brutality but also to its ethical reservations, while providing access to the all-too-rarely heard voices of the dispossessed. |
Contributor Bio(s): Palmer, Patricia: - Patricia Palmer is a senior lecturer in English at King's College London. She is the author of Language and Conquest in Early Modern Ireland (2002) and has broadcast on language for Irish radio. |