Emma Nic Cárthaigh

Emma Nic Cárthaigh is a senior lecturer in Early and Medieval Irish in University College Cork and a member of the Locus Project. Her research interests include literary and historical analysis of early Irish lyric poetry and Classical Modern Irish poetry; edition and translation of Old, Middle and Classical Modern Irish texts particularly poetry; Modern Irish translations of Dante’s Divina Commedia; Irish onomastics and medieval Irish eschatology.

• Compilation and analysis of data for Foclóir stairiúil áitainmneacha na Gaeilge / Historical dictionary of Gaelic placenames (this is a Locus Project publication);
• Commentary on Irish onomastics and the determination of boundary-extents of ancient Irish population groups;
• Medieval Irish lyric poetry;
• Classical early modern Irish (or bardic) poetry;
• Medieval and early modern Irish prose; 
• Literary and historical analysis of medieval and early modern Irish poetry;
• Studies on early modern Latin translations of medieval Irish poetry;
• Christian representations of heaven, hell and the afterlife in medieval Ireland;
• The Irish precursors of Dante’s Divina Commedia;
• Modern Irish translations of Dante’s Divina Commedia and metrical form in these translations;
• Classical echoes (Ovid and Homer) in medieval Irish literature.
• Medieval, early modern and Modern Irish palaeography

I teach various subjects through both English and Irish for the degrees in Celtic Civilisation and in Gaeilge and for the Department’s four MA degrees. My teaching interests include Old Irish philology; Middle Welsh language and literature; the arrival of Christianity in Ireland and its impact on literacy; the rise of monastic and eremitic culture in early Christian Ireland; early Irish and Welsh lyric poetry (the earliest vernacular literature in Europe); medieval Irish political history; medieval, early modern and modern Irish palaeography; medieval Irish metrics and textual criticism of medieval and early modern Irish texts.

Undergraduate Modules:

Currently co-ordinate and deliver all lectures for the following undergraduate Celtic Civilisation modules:

CC2003 Exile and Longing: Early Celtic Lyric Poetry [Selected texts representative of the earliest poetry of Ireland and Wales are studied in translation. The primary aim of this module is to examine the context that gave rise to the earliest vernacular literature in Europe through a close reading of particular poems.]

CC3006 Irish Historical Tales [Medieval Irish political history in prose tale form]

CC3010 Early Irish I [The grammar of the Old Irish language, c.600-c.900, ab initio]

Co-ordinator for the medieval element of Third Year Gaeilge and deliver all lectures for the following undergraduate Gaeilge modules through the medium of Irish:

GA3032 Staidéar Bunúsach ar an tSean-Ghaeilge [The grammar of the Old Irish language, c.600-c.900, ab initio, leading to reading poetry and prose extracts from the manuscript tradition]

GA3031 Filíocht na Sean- agus na Meán-Ghaeilge [Selected texts representative of the earliest poetry of Ireland are studied in translation.]

Postgraduate modules:

CC6001 Old Irish

CC6006 Special Topic

CC6007 Research Presentation

CC6024 (online only) Tales of Kings and Heroes in Medieval Ireland