The Modern Afterlives of Old Irish Travel Narratives - by Natalia I Petrovskaia (Hardcover)

About the Book

The book proposes a new way of writing literary reception history: by using the medieval Irish taxonomy of texts, and in particular 'immram' and 'echtra' categories to examine post-medieval texts, including both novels and science fiction television.

Book Synopsis

This book explores the reception of the medieval Irish tradition of fantastic journey tales in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, C.S. Lewis's The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Umberto Eco's Baudolino, and the science fiction television franchises Star Trek and Stargate. In doing so, the book opens the door to a new history of literary reception, using Old Irish genre categories to analyse post-medieval texts. It aims to show that there is a family of texts produced in the post-medieval period that are heirs of the medieval Irish literary tradition of fantastic voyage narratives and that using Old Irish genre categories to analyse post-medieval works can open up new perspectives in our understanding of these works.

About the Author

Natalia I. Petrovskaia holds MA, MPhil and PhD degrees from the University of Cambridge. She is Assistant Professor in Celtic at Utrecht University. Her recent publications include This is Not a Grail Romance. Understanding Historia Peredur vab Efrawc (University of Wales Press, 2023).