Representation of the tales of the Ulster cycle in Foras Feasa ar Éirinn: organisation of discourse and contexts

Abstract

This article examines the patterns of history-writing in Geoffrey Keating’s retellings of the tales from the Ulster cycle in Foras Feasa ar Éirinn. The study illustrates how Keating’s familiarity with Irish medieval sources, his clerical education, which placed considerable emphasis on rhetoric, and his awareness of the English and continental traditions of history-writing, influenced the composition of the fragment of Foras Feasa ar Éirinn dedicated to the tales from the Ulster cycle. The author shows that in this fragment Keating tended to apply native narrative strategies more. As regards authorial intentions, Keating used the selected tales from the Ulster cycle as exempla of sin and its drastic consequences, which may explain his particular interest in the death tales.