Irish Europe, 1600–1650

Writing and learning

Raymond Gillespie & Ruairí Ó hUiginn, editors

‘The publication of the fifth volume in the Irish in Europe series is a valuable contribution to this topic … The scholars who contributed to this well-produced publication by Four Courts Press have drawn extensively from original sources … [this book] highlights how the academic, religious and cultural contribution of the Franciscans in the seventeenth century cannot be underestimated in an age of turbulent change in Irish society. The analysis in this publication of the challenges that the Franciscans faced are truly fascinating … this work fills a notable lacuna focusing on exploring the cultural impact of Irish writing and learning in Europe. Raymond Gillespie and Ruairí Ó hUiginn’s editorial skills, with the valued contribution of Thomas O’Connor as series editor, ensure that the reader is constantly absorbed by the material presented … the next volume in the Irish in Europe series is eagerly awaited!’ Ciaran O’Carroll, Archivum Franciscan Historicum (July 2014).

‘The breadth and scholarship of the volume does remarkable justice to the large frame of reference claimed by the title … Taken together, this is a genuinely inter-disciplinary volume which combines the expertise of historians and literary scholars to produce and interesting and multifaceted investigation of Gaelic intellectual activity in the continent … The fact that the various contributors often focus on different aspects of the same figure results in a thought-provoking mix and some suggestive connections’, Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin, Irish Literary Supplement (Spring 2016).

‘The book looks to the way in which scholars of Irish origin, part of the flood of tens of thousands, spent part of their lives on the Continent in the first half of the 17th-century … The authors, leading experts in the field, are able to convey the sense of intellectual excitement and experimentation of the period. The volume addresses both academic and more general readers. It is accessible to undergraduate students and enjoyable for a general audience … The texts discussed in the volume, pay attention to what seemed important to the exiled writers themselves and the way in which they expressed it … the book builds a new polyphonic perspective on the hybrid and mutating intellectual world of Irish exiles, offering many suggestive lines of future research’, Igor Pérez Tostado, Renaissance Quarterly (2014).

‘Explores the fascinating world of an early Irish diaspora … This new publication takes us to another level as it explores the intellectual and cultural environment encountered by these émigrés and their engagement with new ideas of scholarship which gradually shaped and reshaped their world view', Michael Merrigan, Ireland's Genealogical Gazette (December 2013).

‘As might be expected from this series, the essays in this volume are of uniform excellence. Some of them are aimed more at the specialist scholar than at the general reader. Nevertheless, even the casual reader will learn much about the work of the learned seventeenth century Irish community on the continent', Pat McCarthy, Books Ireland (December 2013).

‘Irish Europe 1600-1650: writing and learning explores literary, linguistic, spiritual and cultural aspects of the relationship between members of the Irish community on the continent of Europe and their new neighbours during the first half of the seventeenth century ... Each of the contributors is an eminent scholar in either the field of history or of Irish-language and brings their specialist academic knowledge and insights to bear on the subject in a work which no only draws on an extensive base of earlier research but is also keenly attuned to recent developments ... an elegantly produced book ... suitable for a wide readership', Deirdre Nic Mhathúna, Studia Hibernia (2017).