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Eleanor Knott Memorial Lecture 2025, Roinn na Gaeilge, Coláiste na Tríonóide
Dr Emma Nic Cárthaigh
‘Intertextual weavings in the Colloquy of Fintan mac Bóchrai and the Hawk of Achill’
The Department of Irish and Celtic Languages in Trinity College is delighted to announce the third Eleanor Knott Memorial Lecture. It will take place in the Long Room Hub, Trinity College Dublin, at 6pm on Thursday, 27 November 2025.
Eleanor Knott Memorial Lecture 2025
Intertextual weavings in the Colloquy between Fintan mac Bóchrai and the Hawk of Achill
The author of the Colloquy between Fintan mac Bóchrai and the Hawk of Achill was uniquely skilled and ingenious in his creation and development of the narrative framework for the contents of his poem. The text is replete with references to the pseudo-historical and saga material of his own time. The poet synthesised this material to produce a new pseudo-history of Ireland that spans the period between the time of the Flood and the sixth-century high-kingship of Tara. The overarching narrative framework of this poem comprises a conversation between two extraordinary characters of the literary and folkloric tradition in which each tells the other of his adventures. The ingenuity of the Colloquy lies in the manner in which the author invokes both the literary and the oral traditions via his interlocutors’ experience of incidents preserved in those traditions. The varying perspectives of these characters and the inventiveness and humour that the author brings to those perspectives is what makes this poem exceptional. This paper will constitute an exploration of how the poet weaves elements from pre-existing pseudo-histories, medieval Irish political history, saga material, dinnseanchas and otherworldly tales into a new, unique and outstanding work that raises questions for a modern audience as to this poet’s influences, motives and aims in the composition of this most idiosyncratic of colloquys.