Fabulous Ireland- 'Ibernia Fabulosa'

This book examines Italian descriptions of Ireland in the context of the Renaissance discovery of ancient culture and reshaping of geography, historiography, travel writing and the fashioning of the self and the other, arguing that Italians of the time imagined Ireland differently in different circumstances, populating it with their own fantasies.

According to Petrarch, the Father of the Renaissance, Ireland was almost as well known to the Italians as Italy itself. Visiting Ireland from the comfort of their armchairs, his followers thus knew for a fact that the Irish ate their fathers and slept with their mothers, were welcoming and inhospitable, and were the best and the worst of Christians, and that Ireland was home to St Patrick's Purgatory, where you could visit the otherworld, save your soul and your business, and locate your missing relatives. This book examines Italian descriptions of Ireland in the context of the Renaissance rediscovery of ancient culture and reinvention of geography and historiography, the fashioning of the self and the other, and travel writing. The author argues that the intellectuals of the time were more interested in 'truth for' than in 'truth about' and that they imagined Ireland differently in different circumstances, populating it with their own fantasies, so that its otherness would pose no threat to their sense of self.

Autorentext

Eric Haywood is a senior lecturer at University College Dublin, where he is Head of Italian Studies and Director of the UCD Foundation for Italian Studies. He teaches Italian, trains teachers of Italian and lectures and researches on Renaissance and contemporary Italy. He was educated in Montreux and Lausanne, at the universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh and at the European University Institute in Florence. He is a Cavaliere dell Ordine della Stella d Italia.

Zusammenfassung
«Together with the quality of exposition, which maintains a clear distinction between fact and comment, this copious documentation makes Ibernia Fabulosa a valuable, usable, and consistently engaging book.»
(Cormac O Cuilleanain, Modern Language Review Vol. 112, Part 2 2017)

Inhalt

Contents: Whose World? The Need not to know Out of this World? Imagining Ireland with the Ancients Amazing World? Imagining Ireland with (and without) Gerald of Wales The Other World: Imagining Ireland in the Shadow of Dante Between Worlds: Imagining Ireland in the Footsteps of St Patrick Divided World: Imagining Ireland(s) at the Time of the Reformation New World: Imagining Ireland in a New World Mad World: Forever Imagining Ireland.