Contiguous court societies: The renaissance Irish lordships and the Tudor and early Stuart English monarchy

This chapter opens Ireland and the Renaissance court, an interdisciplinary collection of chapters exploring Irish and English courts, courtiers and politics in the early modern period, c.1450-1640. It gives an overview of changes to court culture in the late medieval and early modern periods and argues for the European character of Irish courts and aristocratic practice. It briefly describes the chapters, which are written by both established and emergent scholars working in the fields of history, literary studies and philology. Topics explored include Gaelic cúirteanna, the indigenous centres of aristocratic life throughout the medieval period; on the regnal court of the emergent British Empire based in London at Whitehall; and on Irish participation in the wider world of European elite life and letters. Collectively, they expand the chronological limits of 'early modern' Ireland to include the fifteenth century and recreate its multilingual character through exploration of its English, Irish and Latin archives. In sum, this chapter argues for moving beyond binary approaches to English-Irish history and identifying points of contact as well as contention.