Medieval Irish vision literature: a genre study

This dissertation examines medieval literary accounts of visions of the afterlife with an origin or provenance in Ireland from the perspective of genre, analysing their structural and literary characteristics both synchronically and diachronically. To this end, I have developed a new typology of medieval vision literature. I address the question in what manner the internationally attested genre of vision literature is adapted and developed in an Irish literary milieu. I explore this central research question through an interrogation of the typological unity of the key texts, both in formal arrangement and in the eschatological themes they express. My analysis of the structure and rhetoric of these narratives reveals the primary role of identity strategies, question-and-answer patterns and exhortation for their narrative cohesion and didactic function. In addition, I was able to make a formal distinction at text-level between the adaptation of the genre as an autonomous unit and the adaptation of thematic motifs as topoi. This further enabled me to nuance the distribution of characteristic features in the genre. My analysis of the spatial and temporal aspects of the eschatological journey confirms a preoccupation with personal eschatology. It reveals a close connection between the development of the aspects of graded access and trial in the genre and a growing awareness of an interim state of the soul after death. Finally, my dissertation provides new editions, translations and analyses of primary sources. My research breaks new ground in the hitherto underexplored area of genre adaptation in Ireland. In addition, it contributes significantly to our understanding of the nature of vision literature both in an Irish and a European context, and to our knowledge of the transmission of eschatological thought in the Latin West. Discusses the visions of: Laisrén, Fursa, Adomnán, Lóchán, Tnugdal, Owein and Visio Sancti Pauli Redactions VI and XI.

Nietzsche and Montaigne: cheerful naturalism

The influence of the Essays of Michel de Montaigne on the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche has, hitherto, received scant scholarly attention. The aim of this thesis is to address this lacuna in the literature by making evident the importance of the Essays to the development of Nietzsche’s philosophy. I argue that, in order to fully appreciate Nietzsche’s thought, it must be recognized that, from the beginning to the end of his philosophical life, Montaigne was for him a thinker of the deepest personal and philosophical significance. Against the received scholarly opinion, which would see Montaigne as influential only for Nietzsche’s middle works, I contend that the Essays continue to be a key inspiration for Nietzsche even into his late and final works. Montaigne, with his cheerful affirmation of life, his experimental mode of philosophizing, and his resolutely naturalized perspective, was an exemplar for Nietzsche as a philosopher, psychologist, sceptic and naturalist. The Essays not only stimulated Nietzsche’s thinking on questions to do with morality, epistemology and the nature of the soul but also informed his conception of the ideal philosophical life. Moreover, to explore the Essays from a Nietzschean viewpoint, allows the drawing out of the more radical aspects of Montaigne’s thought, while to probe Montaigne’s impact on Nietzsche, provides insight into the trajectory of Nietzsche’s philosophy as he broke free from romantic pessimism and embraced the naturalism that would guide his works from Human, All Too Human onward.