In search of Cork's collecting traditions: from Kilcrea's Library to the Boole Library of today

The objective of this essay is not a description of the presently unresearched, unstated and unquantified tradition of collectors, collecting and collectables in Cork; it is rather one of signposting what survives in terms of influences which coalesced into what became the bibliographical and museological resources of the Queen's College and ultimately University College, Cork (UCC).

Milton and romance: vernacular romance and chivalric traditions in Paradise Lost

The thesis examines Milton's strategic use of romance in Paradise Lost, arguing that such a handling of romance is a provocative realignment of its values according to the poet’s Christian focus. The thesis argues that Milton's use of romance is not simply the importation of a tradition into the poem; it entails a backward judgement on that tradition, defining its idealising tendencies as fundamentally misplaced. The thesis also examines the Caroline uses of romance and chivalry in the 1630s to provide a vision of British unification, and Milton's reaction to this political agenda.

Merleau-Ponty and Nishida: Artistic expression as 'motor-perceptual faith'

This dissertation carries out a dialogue between Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Nishida Kitarō concerning their theories of artistic expression and faith. Both philosophers go through remarkably similar trajectories in their philosophic projects: In their early works they focus on the motor-perceptual body of the artist, and as they move towards the mature articulation of their ontologies, the concept of faith becomes central. I propose the term “motor-perceptual faith” to bring these seemingly diverse sets of concerns into a conceptual continuity. My study explores this connection, and argues that the artist’s motor-perceptual expressive body, as colourfully and sometimes poetically articulated in their early works, enacts the form of faith developed more abstractly in their later writings. Exploring these relations fosters a mutual expansion of the early by the later works, thus thickening the concept of faith by seeing it as enacted by the artist, while enlarging the concept of artistic expression by understanding it as a practice of motor‐perceptual faith. Framing these philosophers as putting forth a traditionally religious concept as illustrated by way of artistic expression, offers a new articulation of both of their writings, an important conceptual bridge between the two, while challenging un-ambiguous distinctions between art, philosophy and religion, and ultimately philosophy East and West.