The Permanence of Place: Places and Their Names in Irish Literature
Piotr Stalmaszczyk
University of Łódź
Abstract
This paper discusses the relation between places and their names as reflected in Irish literature. According to Robbie Hannan (1991: 19) attachment to place is among the strongest human emotions, explicitly revealed in literature. Celtic literature is ‘saturated’ with images of landscape and preoccupied with places and their names, landscape is constantly present in ancient sagas and bardic poetry, modern drama, short stories, novels and essays. The sense of place is explicitly manifest in medieval heroic tales (such as The Táin), and twentieth century novels (e.g. James Joyce’s Ulysses) and poetry, or contemporary drama (e.g. Brian Friel’s Translations). Patrick Sheeran (1988: 194) has observed that the idea of the Irish sense of place is: (a) a product of the native tradition; (b) it is a verbal or nominal preoccupation and has little to do with any actual cultivation of things; (c) it relates to death rather than to life. The principal aim of this paper is to further add to the above characteristics.