Early Irish Myths and Sagas, anonymous, ed. Jeffrey Gantz

[bala · home]
[okadenamatī · reviews]
[mesaramatiziye · other writings]
[tedbezī · languages]

language: Old Gaelic (English tr. Jeffrey Gantz
country: Wales
year: medieval
form: sagas
genre(s): fantasy
dates read: 11.4.23-24.5.23

Early Irish Myths and Sagas, edited and translated by Jeffrey Gantz, is a bit of a mixed bag. the selection of stories is good — though not every story moved me personally — and I’m glad, in principle, that these accessible translations exist. the highlights for me were the last few, but especially “The Tale of Macc Da Thó’s Pig” (resonated unexpectedly with this history of Afghanistan — trying to play [effectively] great powers off each other) and “The Intoxication of the Ulaid” (wacky romp but without throwing Lóegaire, Conall, and weirdly also kind of Cú Chulainn under the bus the way Fled Bricrenn does).

there are, however, some substantial issues with Gantz’s translations. to name just a few of these:

• for many names (mainly places but also people) Gantz has decided not to use forms that are a) attested in manuscripts (“Echu” in place of Eochaid, e.g.) or b) common in scholarship or in other translations (Cú Chulaind in place of Cú Chulainn, e.g.). for a public-facing text designed to introduce non-specialists to the material, this is a very bad choice!
• Gantz’s scholarship is both extremely outdated and I think tendentious even for 1981 in ways that he absolutely does not indicate. more generally, he both is deeply committed to presenting these texts as mythological — often in a Frazerian framework, yikes — and simultaneously never actually explains what any of the mythological archetypes or narratives he’s alluding to actually entail. as a result, in some ways his introductions are actually actively worse than just presenting the texts with no commentary.
• Gantz has made a bunch of editorial decisions that are not clearly indicated in the bodies of the texts, especially omitting poetry he — apparently — doesn’t think is good enough but also in the way he’s connecting versions of the texts. the critical material is, in general, wildly inadequate for an actual general audience reader.
• there are also — and this is just based on some cursory glances at the original texts — a bunch of flat-out errors in the translation, like the egregious “i n-Alpain” / “in the Alps” (rather than the correct “in Scotland”) that I flagged earlier.

it’s a mixed bagm, but it’s better than nothing, and it does collect a bunch of important Ulster Cycle stories and makes some attempts to introduce them to people who are interested in approaching actual medieval Gaelic literature and not just filtered-through-pop-culture misconceptions and misrepresentations. that’s something.

moods: adventurous, dark, wacky

webring >:-]
[previous · next]