Kenneth Jackson examines nature poetry that was produced in Ireland and Wales in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Reading Old English Texts, first published in 1997, focuses on the critical methods being used and developed for reading and analysing writings in Old English. The collection is timely, given the explosion of interest in the theory, method, and practice of critical reading. Each chapter engages with work on Old English texts from a particular methodological stance. The authors are all experts in the field, but are also concerned to explain their method and its application to a broad undergraduate and graduate readership. The chapters include a brief historical background to the approach; a definition of the field or method under consideration; a discussion of some exemplary criticism (with a balance of prose and verse passages); an illustration of the ways in which texts are read through this approach, and some suggestions for future work.

Patrick Sims-Williams provides an approach to some of the issues surrounding Irish literary influence on Wales, situating them in the context of the rest of medieval literature and international folklore.

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Trees played a particularly important part in the rural economy of Anglo-Saxon England, both for wood and timber and as a wood-pasture resource, with hunting gaining a growing cultural role. But they are also powerful icons in many pre-Christian religions, with a degree of tree symbolism found in Christian scripture too. This wide-ranging book explores both the "real", historical and archaeological evidence of trees and woodland, and as they are depicted in Anglo-Saxon literature and legend. Place-name and charter references cast light upon the distribution of particular tree species (mapped here in detail for the first time) and also reflect upon regional character in a period that was fundamental for the evolution of the present landscape. Della Hooke is Honorary Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Research in Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Birmingham.

The volume collects papers from a multi-disciplinary workshop, held under the auspices of the European Science Foundation, which examined the idea of Celticism in its European contexts from the eighteenth century to the present. Linguists, historians, cultural theorists and literary critics from a range of European countries addressed for the first time in a sustained way how the idea of Celticism developed and how it affected many aspects of European culture. A primary focus of the volume is James Macpherson's Ossian, now under-going a re-estimation. Other topics which receive significant examination are Celticism as a force in cultural nationalism, Celticism in contemporary Christianity, primitivism, the image of the Celt in archaeology, historiography, political propaganda and the role of the idea of the Celtic in linguistic taxonomy. This pioneering work will be of interest to scholars and students in a wide range of subjects in which the nature, function and effect of cultural concepts and images are of central concern.

First published in 1985, the essays in this edited collection offer a representative sample of the descriptive and systematic approach to the study of literary translation. The book is a reflection of the theoretical thinking and practical research carried out by an international group of scholars who share a common standpoint. They argue the need for a rigorous scientific approach the phenomena of translation – one of the most significant branches of Comparative Literature – and regard it as essential to link the study of particular translated texts with a broader methodological position. Considering both broadly theoretical topics and particular cases and traditions, this volume will appeal to a wide range of students and scholars across disciplines.

In Contemporary Irish Poetry and the Pastoral Tradition, Donna L. Potts closely examines the pastoral genre in the work of six Irish poets writing today. Through the exploration of the poets and their works, she reveals the wide range of purposes that pastoral has served in both Northern Ireland and the Republic: a postcolonial critique of British imperialism; a response to modernity, industrialization, and globalization; a way of uncovering political and social repercussions of gendered representations of Ireland; and, more recently, a means for conveying environmentalism’s more complex understanding of the value of nature. Potts traces the pastoral back to its origins in the work of Theocritus of Syracuse in the third century and plots its evolution due to cultural changes. While all pastoral poems share certain generic traits, Potts makes clear that pastorals are shaped by social and historical contexts, and Irish pastorals in particular were influenced by Ireland’s unique relationship with the land, language, and industrialization due to England’s colonization. For her discussion, Potts has chosen six poets who have written significant collections of pastoral poetry and whose work is in dialogue with both the pastoral tradition and other contemporary pastoral poets. Three poets are men—John Montague, Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley—while three are women—Eavan Boland, Medbh McGuckian, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill. Five are English-language authors, while the sixth—Ní Dhomhnaill—writes in Irish. Additionally, some of the poets hail from the Republic, while others originate from Northern Ireland. Potts contends that while both Irish Republic and Northern Irish poets respond to a shared history of British colonization in their pastorals, the 1921 partition of the country caused the pastoral tradition to evolve differently on either side of the border, primarily because of the North’s more rapid industrialization; its more heavily Protestant population, whose response to environmentalism was somewhat different than that of the Republic’s predominantly Catholic population; as well the greater impact of the world wars and the Irish Troubles. In an important distinction from other studies of Irish poetry, Potts moves beyond the influence of history and politics on contemporary Irish pastoral poetry to consider the relatively recent influence of ecology. Contemporary Irish poets often rely on the motif of the pastoral retreat to highlight various environmental threats to those retreats—whether they be high-rises, motorways, global warming, or acid rain. Potts concludes by speculating on the future of pastoral in contemporary Irish poetry through her examination of more recent poets—including Moya Cannon and Paula Meehan—as well as other genres such as film, drama, and fiction.

Thomas Merton and the Celts offers a new lens through which to view Merton's life and spirituality. By examining unpublished letters, notebooks, and taped conferences for the Trappist novices--previously unavailable to the general reader--the author breaks new ground in Merton studies, revealing Merton's growing fascination with his Welsh ancestry, Celtic monasticism, and early Irish hermit poetry. Merton, having immersed himself in reading about Celtic Christianity--not just about liturgy, but about household rituals, illuminated manuscripts, high crosses, and hermit poetry as well--recognized in these ancient hermits who lived on "water and herbs," experienced kinship with creatures, and wrote poems about the birds a mirror of his own desires. Indeed, in a profound way and at a deep level, Merton discovered himself in Celtic Christianity.