Sean- agus Meán-Ghaeilge
Research

De Finibus

Go to dedicated De Finibus website.

Having as its main focus the preparation of authoritative editions and translations of key texts in the area of medieval Irish literature of the afterlife, the De Finibus project will also study questions of background, evolution and reception in this influential genre. The medieval Irish inherited, and further transformed, an age-old tradition of visionary accounts of what awaits the soul after death. In so doing, they produced vivid eschatological narratives which had a profound impact throughout Europe as well as being texts of remarkable literary and spiritual power in their own right.

Funded by a three-year grant from the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS), the De Finibus project will undertake to create a centre for the coordinated study of this fascinating and seminal corpus. It will draw on the expertise of senior scholars within and beyond UCC, while also providing support for younger scholars at the postgraduate and postdoctoral levels. The project will produce editions and analyses of several key texts in the genre, and its members will collaborate in the study of the background, development and reception of the corpus as a whole. The results of this work will be disseminated in the first instance via the editions themselves, supplemented by articles in refereed journals. A sourcebook presenting several of the main texts in translation is also planned.