This study is devoted to five Irish language texts composed in the period between 9th and 21st centuries: four prose tales, an Old Irish tale Loinges Mac nUislenn (The Exile of the Sons of Uisliu (before 10th c.)), two Middle Irish texts Toruigheacht Dhiarmada agus Ghrainne (The Pursuit of Diarmaid and Grainne (c. 12thc.)) and Tochmarc Etaine (The Wooing of Etain), an 18th century Romance of Mis and Dubh Ruis, and a narrative poem Mis published by the contemporary Irish poet Biddy Jekinson in 2001. It examines the heroines of these texts, Derdrui, Grainne, Etain, and Mis, focusing particularly on their roles in the development of their respective narratives and their influence on the overall message of their texts. The texts share a strong connection in that they all, in a more or less direct way, touch upon the female experience reflected in their leading female characters, yet none of them, except for Jenkinson's poem, focuses expressly on representing female characters. Instead the texts use these characters as a means for the elaboration of male characters, reinforcing at the same time the contemporaneous patriarchal viewpoint, thus creating the ideological scheme of the text. Jenkinson's Mis reveals the underlying narrative force of these traditional female characters. It uses a traditional tale to create a new narrative which is re-centered on its female character, thus narrativizing its inherent strength. Beneath their explicitly assigned roles, the female characters in question serve as powerful narrative agents. Their impact transforms the overt ideologies of their respective narratives so that they diverge from the traditional role of the conveyors of conventional values. The examination of the female characters concentrates particularly on the effect their speech has on the development of the narrative. Although modestly represented in the discussed texts, the female words nevertheless subvert the explicit ideologies of their text by the introduction of skepticism as to the objective values suggested by the texts, thus allowing for a conversation with the prevalent discourses and in the end for the consideration of alternative discourses. The dissertation employs Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of dialogism and heteroglossia, as well as his examination of the Bildungsrom, which allows for the theoretization of the connection between the texts, as well as for their re-interpretation. / Celtic Languages and Literatures

The thesis is a study of the relationship between Ireland and England as portrayed in Irish post-primary history school textbooks, dealing with the period 1800 to the present day, and published or in use since 1922. The thesis identifies two distinct categories of texts and these are referred to as purist texts and moderate texts. The purist texts are characterised by their strong pro-Irish, and anti-English biases in their presentation of Irish history. The moderate texts, by contrast, are generally without such biases and present more neutral accounts of Irish history. The central thesis of the work is that the relationship between Ireland and England as portrayed in the purist texts is fundamentally different from the relationship portrayed in the moderate texts. Close examination of the texts revealed that the presentation of Irish history fell into three large divisions, military and revolutionary history, political history and social history. For this reason the thesis, apart from introductory and concluding chapters, is comprised of three large central chapters, dealing in turn with each of these three aspects of Irish history. Thus, Chapter II looks at the treatment of the military and revolutionary history in the texts. Chapter III deals with the political history of Ireland and Chapter IV treats of the social history of Ireland. Each of these three chapters elaborates on how the topics dealt with contribute to the overall portrayal of the relationship between Ireland and England, as presented in the texts. The thesis concludes that the relationship between Ireland and England portrayed by the purist texts is a negative and hostile one, while the relationship portrayed by the moderate texts is a positive one. Hence, a fundamental difference in the portrayal of the relationship between the purist and moderate texts is established.

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This thesis explores the achievement of the contemporary Irish poet John Montague, concentrating on his major works published from the fifties to the nineties. Montague’s themes comprise not only Ireland and history, but also love, family, environment, the power and limits of poetry, the addressing of death and boyhood memories. Through close analysis of single poems and main sequences, the study attends to aesthetic, intertextual, psychological, historical and biographical issues. Its particular emphasis is on how Montague's language opens up ways of considering such issues. My readings try, therefore, to re-enact the subtle becoming and shifting that take place in individual poems and in his work as a whole. In order to illuminate the processes at work in Montague’s poetry, the chapters of the thesis are split into some that discuss themes and others that focus on volumes. Chapter one shows how Montague's concern with poetry surfaces in his work. It draws on poems from various stages in his career; the thesis also returns in subsequent chapters to Montague's addressing of poetry. The second chapter outlines Montague’s concern with exile and land in Forms of Exile and Poisoned Lands, and with family and love in A Chosen Light and Tides. Chapter three argues that Montague uses the journey as a structural device throughout The Rough Field. The fourth chapter concentrates on Montague's treatment of his family: the father in The Rough Field, A Slow Dance and The Dead Kingdom and the mother in A Slow Dance and The Dead Kingdom, which is read as the climax of Montague's return to family members. The fifth chapter analyses his main love-sequence. The Great Cloak, examines how his re-contextualisation’s of poems and use of pictorial illustration affect the reading of some love poems, and considers two love poems from Smashing the Piano. The sixth chapter demonstrates how Montague develops old and new themes in Mount Eagle and discusses how a net of crossings constitutes the collection's structural centre. The final chapter explores how in Time in Armagh Montague refines his transformation of autobiographical material into art. The analysis of Border Sick Call locates a concern with poetry itself in the late writing and brings out the sequence's shifting between the mysterious and familiar. "But in what country have we been?" is its final line, helping to define the general concern of the thesis, which is to explore the riches of the "country" mapped by Montague's poetry.

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