Medieval Studies-Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures Joint Lecture
Date and Time
October 30, 2023
05:30PM - 07:00PM EDT
Location
Barker Center 110 (the Thompson Room)
Elva Johnston (University College Dublin), The Epigraphic Habit in Late Antique Ireland. Co-sponsored with the Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures.
It is now over forty years since Ramsay McMullen published his famous and ground-breaking article ‘The Epigraphic Habit in the Roman Empire’. Among other things he wondered if history was ‘being written in the right way’. This paper will re-examine how we, and the Irish, wrote their earliest histories. What factors catalysed the introduction of the first extant writing (ogam inscriptions)? Did writing inform communal affiliations as well as connections between the island and its neighbours in the Roman and sub-Roman west? Are there new ways to write about these histories and connections, ones that place Ireland in broader late antique contexts?