Poetics and Polemics

Poetics and Polemics presents new readings of a collection of seventeenth-century polemical poems composed in Irish by authors about whom almost nothing is known, and to whom no other works are securely ascribed. The poems in the book are those edited by Cecile O'Rahilly in 1652 (Five Seventeenth-Century Political Poems), whose editions have not been challenged or superceded. In Poetics and Polemics, explication of the poems is preceeded by an introductory chapter of historical background. Each poem is assigned a full chapter in which a close reading of the poem - literary, political, and polemical - is presented. Full literal translations to English are offered in the case of each poem in Appendices.