Everyday Empire: Comparing the Verse Letter in Irish and English

• In Event: Irish Bardic Poetry and the Transition from Medieval to Early Modern

Abstract

This presentation approaches the verse letter as a genre common to Irish and English poets alike, and compares Irish bardic poems to lords and patrons with John Donne’s prose epistles ‘to men of honor’. In this genre we might have a rare source that not only allows glimpse into Irish contemporary thought about the kingdom to which they were, at least ostensibly, politically linked, but also one that can be compared with an English equivalent. Scholars have closely described the high politics and theory of Irish-English relations in this age of colonialism and state expansion, and are increasingly exploring individual mentalities. The verse letter, which passed between social equals and from inferiors to superiors, uniquely interwove those public and personal realms and, as such, may offer complementary insights into the quotidian concerns of those who lived, worked, moved and thought within the expanding British empire.

Author

• Brendan Kane, University of Connecticut