1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910453234803321

Autore

Palmer Patricia <1957->

Titolo

The severed head and the grafted tongue : literature, translation and violence in early modern Ireland / / Patricia Palmer, King's College London [[electronic resource]]

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cambridge : , : Cambridge University Press, , 2013

ISBN

1-107-46181-2

1-139-89345-9

1-107-61470-8

1-107-47249-0

1-107-46889-2

1-107-46533-8

1-107-32349-5

1-107-47348-9

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (x, 185 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)

Disciplina

809/.933552

Soggetti

English literature - Early modern, 1500-1700 - History and criticism

Beheading in literature

Violence in literature

Romances, English - History and criticism

Romances

Beheading - Ireland - History

Political violence - Ireland - History

British - Ireland - History - 16th century

Ireland History 16th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction -- 1. 'A horses loade of heades': conquest and atrocity in early-modern Ireland -- 2. The romance of the severed head: Sir John Harington's translation of Orlando Furioso -- 3. Defaced: allegory, violence and romance recognition in The faerie queene -- 4. The head in a bag: Sir George Carew's translation of Alonso de Ercilla's La



Araucana -- 5. Elegy and afterlives.

Sommario/riassunto

Severed heads emblemise the vexed relationship between the aesthetic and the atrocious. During the Elizabethan conquest of Ireland, colonisers such as Edmund Spenser, Sir John Harington and Sir George Carew wrote or translated epic romances replete with beheadings even as they countenanced - or conducted - similar deeds on the battlefield. This study juxtaposes the archival record of actual violence with literary depictions of decapitation to explore how violence gets transcribed into art. Patricia Palmer brings the colonial world of Renaissance England face to face with Irish literary culture. She surveys a broad linguistic and geographical range of texts, from translations of Virgil's Aeneid to the Renaissance epics of Ariosto and Ercilla and makes Irish-language responses to conquest and colonisation available in readable translations. In doing so, she offers literary and political historians access not only to colonial brutality but also to its ethical reservations, while providing access to the all-too-rarely heard voices of the dispossessed.