The role of the poet in early societies

Donation 30182 ex libris Proinsias Mac Cana

30182 signed by Proinsias Mac Cana

Includes bibliographical references

Contents: The poetic function - The primal situation - Early Irish literature - Scottish Gaelic culture - Other early western European cultures:Welsh - Other early Western European cultures:Norse and Old English - The notion of wisdom - Wisdom genres and types of literature - Primal poetry and the modern audience

Bloomfield and Dunn describe the varying roles which "poets" have historically filled within society, whether ancient, medieval, or pre-modern and identify the key functions of the poet figure. He (or sometimes she) supports the ruler and is in turn rewarded for a central service to the tribe; he exercises his authority by an apparently magical understanding of the past, present, and future; and, whenever called upon to perform an official rite, he knows how to wield the appropriate traditional, esoteric utterances. In order to illustrate the ways in which this kind of poetic function can be seen to have been exercised in early Irish literature, pre-modern Scottish Gaelic, early Welsh, early Norse and Old English the authors draw on a wide-range of texts. The study concludes with an examination of the implications of their findings for twentieth century readers exploring the utterances of poets remote from them in time or space.