Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Tomás Ó Cathasaigh

Critical Essay by Tomás Ó Cathasaigh

SOURCE: "Mythology in Täin Bö Cuailnge" in Studien zur "Táin Bó Cuailnge," edited by Hildegard L. C. Tristram, Gunter Narr, 1993, pp. 114-32.

In the essay that follows, Ó Cathasaigh explores the presence of Celtic and Indo-European mythological elements in the Táin and demonstrates how they were made meaningful for its Irish audience.

Táin Bó Cúailnge is a work of some complexity, and it should therefore be amenable to a wide range of critical approaches, literary, linguistic, historical and mythological. The complex character of the Táin is sometimes overlooked by individual critics, but it is reflected in the diversity of the criticism which has been devoted to it. While that criticism is as yet quite modest in extent, the Táin has been discussed, in whole or in part, separately or as part of the Ulster Cycle, from a number of viewpoints, all of them having some implications for the general...
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