Irish folklore, myth, and the language classroom

Despite being such a small country, Ireland has had a disproportionately large impact on global culture through its musical and storytelling traditions. Irish novelists are regularly best-sellers, the image of the seanchaí or storyteller is an enduring one, and voluminous manuscripts such as the Book of Leinster preserve tales from the dawn of the Middle Ages. Both the medieval sagas and contemporary folklore present a wealth of strange and wonderful events and characters, and exert an ongoing fascination on all those who come across them.

This talk will present some ways to use this fascination productively in the teaching of English and other subjects. As examples of authentic material, folktales and literary translations of earlier sagas provide examples of elevated register, wordplay, and dialect or non-standard use. Genres such as the proverb and rhetorical figures which are found embedded in tales are often found in native speech, and the inherently performative nature of storytelling encourages active learning. I will also discuss storytelling as a bridge to cultural understanding, both of the target culture and one’s own.

When: Tuesday May 6 at 18.30 (Zoom)

Last day for registration: 5th May

Sign up here: https://forms.gle/V3bf49YJyzZAtufT8