Oral and print cultures in Ireland, 1600–1900
Marc Caball & Andrew Carpenter, editors
'[In this] helpful collection edited by Marc Caball and Andrew Carpenter … hypotheses are grounded in precise documentation and analysis. The techniques are the scholarly equivalent of keyhole surgery, and larger benefits appear … Thanks to patient efforts like these essays, the oral and literate cultures of Ireland before 1900, largely lost, are slowly being recovered or reconstructed', Toby Barnard, Irish Literary Supplement (Spring 2011).
‘This collection of seven scholarly essays examines the nexus of spoken, hand-written and printed language in Irish culture and the often obscured and contradictory relationships between an academic culture that values written documents above all else and an oral tradition that is an integral part of the fabric of Irish society', Reference & Research Book News (February 2011).
‘This volume argues that scholars have overlooked the dynamic relationship between written and spoken word in Irish culture … The essays they have compiled approach the interactions between print, manuscript, and oral traditions from various theoretical perspectives, but always with an eye to illuminating the complex and often reciprocal processes underlying these relationships. The book is specifically framed as an attempt to foster dialogue among scholars working with these issues, and though it is clearly located within the purview of Irish Studies, it has important implications for scholars in a range of related disciplines … The volume successfully illustrates the interplay of verbal media in Ireland prior to the twentieth century. It should be of interest to folklorists as well as to others who study culture and communication, for its emphasis on the mutability and strategic uses of texts in various forms', Jeff Tolbert, Journal of Folklore Research (June 2011).
‘This lively book tackles a major cultural theme though a relatively small number of impressive essays … the book under review provides seven case studies ranging in time from Geoffrey Keating’s Foras feasa ar Éireann (c.1634) to Douglas Hyde’s late Victorian revivalism and its reception in twentieth-century independent Ireland', W.J. Mc Cormack, Irish Historical Studies (2011).
