Author Description

"Circe's Cup offers a challenging comparative analysis of early modern Ireland - across discourses, disciplines, cultures and languages. The modes of discourse examined here include those controlling differences of gender, religion and ethnicity. Works of history, poetry, philology and political philosophy are read side by side in terms of how they represent cultural change. Rather than focus solely on English language sources, this study also takes Irish language writing into account. Rather than set Irish and English writers against each other in some kind of false dichotomy, this study compares and contrasts their work to that by French, Spanish and Italian authors. These essays argue for the need to see similarities between Irish and English texts, in part due to their common European sources, and at the same time not to obscure the sharp and often irreconcilable differences between certain interpretations of these sources."--Jacket.