Prestigious European Prizes in Celtic Studies for UCC Students
04.10.2010
Two UCC students have been honoured with European Prizes in Celtic Studies.
04.10.2010
Two UCC students have been honoured with European Prizes in Celtic Studies.
Dr Barra Ua Cearnaigh, has been awarded the Johann-Kaspar-Zeuß-Prize of the SCE for the best PhD thesis in Celtic Studies. His research was supervised by Dr Neil Buttimer, Department of Modern Irish. Peter Holzmann has been awarded the Johann-Kaspar-Zeuß-Prize of the SCE for the best MA thesis in Celtic Studies. His supervisor was Dr John Carey, Department of Early and Medieval Irish.
The awards were presented by Societas Celtologica Europaea (SCE), a society founded in 2009 to promote the scholarly exploration of Celtic languages, literatures and cultures.
The award to Dr Ua Cearnaigh recognises the originality and comprehensiveness of his researches and as such represents a major endorsement of his studies. His doctoral dissertation examined language theory and practice in the writings of Séamus Ó Scoireadh (James Scurry). This early nineteenth-century Co. Kilkenny figure wrote on the origins and function of language generally and Irish specifically. He also attempted to create from the dialects of Irish current in his time a uniform standard which could be employed in communicating on such diverse areas as religion, politics and culture. Dr Ua Cearnaigh’s enquiry shows that critical reflection on Irish as a language which was strong in the middle ages did not die out in subsequent centuries. Scurry’s thought and action anticipate in many ways steps in support of Irish which this State took from the 1920s onwards after independence.
The centrepiece of Peter Holzmann’s thesis titled: ‘Poetic rhetoric of praise in medieval Ireland: an edition of the panegyric on Áed oll’ is the first full critical edition of ‘Áed oll fri h-andud n-áne’, the only Old Irish praise poem to have survived in its entirety. This is accompanied by a survey of the scholarship which has been devoted to the role of the poet in pre-Norman Ireland, together with an in-depth examination of the relationship between poetry and fame, in terms both of its Indo-European antecedents and with specific reference to the medieval Irish evidence. A particularly innovative aspect of the thesis is an inventory of praise metaphors, especially those relating to trees: this occupies a substantial appendix.
Dr Neil Buttimer of UCC’s Department of Modern Irish congratulating both winners on their achievement commented: “It is to the SEC’s great credit that its awards recognise the ongoing central interest to Celtic Studies of linguistic, textual and cultural scholarship relating to all periods, from the early past to more recent times. The prizes, which Dr Ua Cearnaigh and Mr Holzmann are first to have won, will come to be seen as a major incentive to graduates and emerging scholars in the field”.
Picture: Dr Barra Ua Cearnaigh
MMcS