Knights of Academia discussion

Xaina in #books-and-literature on the KOA server said she read this and commented there about it. Has anyone read it? Does anyone want to read it?

In a review of the book here on Goodreads I found a kind of dictionary and pronunciation guide for names and place names in the poem.

Since this poem came from an oral tradition but was written down, I suggest people interested in the poem should look at the work of Michael Drout. I listened to his lecture series "The Anglo-Saxon World," which covers the same historical time period but in England, not Ireland. I would like to listen to Singers and Tales: Oral Tradition and the Roots of Literature, his more general work on the topics.

Prof. Drout recorded himself reading aloud the entire corpus of Anglo-Saxon poetry, and the recordings are available for free, I think, on his web site. (NB: The Tain is not Anglo-Saxon, but it's from the same time period.)

Yes, the book I was reading has a pronunciation guide as well, but I think there is supposed to be some remscéla, or pre-tales, which provide background on the main characters. But the version of the book I read missed some of them.

Also here is my original comment on the book I posted in the server:

After reading it for a few months I finally finished the Táin translated by Ciaran Carson. It is an Irish legendary tale
about Medb, Queen of Connacht, taking her people to war to steal a prized Bull, while being opposed by the youthful hero Cú Chulainn. I picked this book because I was planning for a trip to Ireland and I thought it would be a good read for the trip. Later the plan changed but I still read the book.
It is a bit weird for me, I can’t understand why people two thousand years ago would act in that way. And the poems in it are hard to understand (perhaps due to translation). Also, a lot of the content can be summarized as xxx is killed at here, hence the place is named as blablablaI could understand this as an important part of the tale but it just sounds irrelevant to me.
On the plus side (or maybe not), It has many vivid descriptions of characters, especially in the chapter of Ulstermen come together. Also, there are some colorful, brutal battle scenes. It is also supposed to have some element of comedy but I totally missed that.
Overall for me this book it’s not a great book but a bit fun to read.

Xaina said, "Also, a lot of the content can be summarized as xxx is killed at here, hence the place is named as blablablaI could understand this as an important part of the tale but it just sounds irrelevant to me."

Thanks very much for posting your impressions and experiences of the book!

The poem is, among other things, the group memory of a people (a tribe, a nation), a people whose culture was oral, a people of a warrior culture. Hence the actions and fates of warriors, and their connection with current place names, is of huge importance to the people of that time and place. In the absence of written books or stone monuments, a line in this poem and a connection with a place name was a monument, a place in the history books.

The first episode of Kenneth Clark's Civilisation shows the rough time period of this poem, though more in England than in Ireland. The peoples there had lost the ability to build stone buildings, and they referred to the Roman ruins as the work of giants. Most everything was ephemeral, except for goldwork, and oral poetry. (We think of oral poetry as ephemeral; that's not a very good way to think of it.)

The poem was to be recited orally, in whole or in part, around the hearth or at public occasions. In some sense it represented the people (the tribe, the nation), and reciting it was to make real, here and now, the group memory and feelings and solidarity.

Warriors hoped for a mention in a national/tribal poem. Current warriors and people would be strengthened and inspired by examples of warriors and by their connection to particular places.

A popularized and historically incorrect but still useful representation of this role of poetry and of oral traditions is central to the movie "The 13th Warrior." I say historically incorrect because the tribes of northwest Europe had had writing for many centuries before Islam appeared. They weren't unfamiliar with the idea of writing, as the movie portrays them as having been.