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Joe Nagy (UCLA): "Dragons in the Medieval Irish 'Transitional Text.'"

November 17, 2014 -
5:15pm to 6:30pm
Stanford Classics Department

This talk examines instances of dragon-slaying in the medieval Irish tradition and how characters tell or suppress the story of the encounter. Crucial to this is the transition from ‘oral’ to written tradition (and back in some case) and the reflexive nature of medieval Irish literature.
Prof. Nagy (UCLA) is the author of The Wisdom of the Outlaw: The Boyhood Deeds of Finn in Gaelic Narrative Tradition (University of California Press, 1985; new edition forthcoming from Four Courts Press, Dublin) and Conversing with Angels and Ancients: Literary Myths of Medieval Ireland (Cornell University Press and Four Courts Press, 1997). Recently he edited Writing Down the Myths (Brepols, 2013), a collection of comparative studies of mythography. Nagy is also the founder and former editor of theCeltic Studies Association of North America Yearbook and former editor of WesternFolklore. Nagy teaches courses in Old Irish and Middle Welsh, Celtic mythology, literature, and folklore, and comparative studies of oral tradition (including epic, ballad, and folktale) and mythology.

Event Sponsor: 
Department of Classics
Contact Email: 
classics@stanford.edu
Contact Phone: 
(650) 723-0479