Playing the Hero

"In Playing the Hero, Ann Dooley examines the surviving manuscript versions of the greatest of the early Irish sagas, the Tain Bo Cuailnge (Cattle-Raid of Cooley), and creates a picture of the cultural conditions and literary mindsets under which medieval scribes recreated the text. Dooley argues that the scribes' work is both a transmission and a translation, and that their own changing historical circumstances within the space of one hundred years, from the beginning to the end of the twelfth century, determined the specifics of their literary creativity."--Jacket.