Old Irish Literature The 'Ulster Cycle' 2 Elizabeth Baldwin

2. Stories related to the Táin: The Pangs of Ulster, The Exile of the Sons of Uisliu, How the Bulls Were Begotten The literature of Ireland is the oldest non-classical literature in Europe. It provides a window on Celtic life in a country which, because it never came under the control of the Roman Empire, preserved the traditional warrior society much longer than other Celtic areas. This course will look at texts from the Irish Heroic Age which clustered around its central epic, the Táin Bó Cúailnge, or Cattle-Raid of Cooley, and the heroic and doomed figure of Cúchulainn, the great Ulster hero.