Sie befinden Sich nicht im Netzwerk der Universität Paderborn. Der Zugriff auf elektronische Ressourcen ist gegebenenfalls nur via VPN oder Shibboleth (DFN-AAI) möglich. mehr Informationen...
Queens as Political Hostages in Pre-Norman Ireland: Derbforgaill and the Three Gormlaiths
Ist Teil von
Journal of English and Germanic philology, 2010-04, Vol.109 (2), p.141-161
Ort / Verlag
Urbana: University of Illinois Press
Erscheinungsjahr
2010
Link zum Volltext
Quelle
Project MUSE
Beschreibungen/Notizen
Medieval Irish queens such as Derbforgaill and the three Gormlaiths achieved notoriety not through their actions, but through depictions of those actions as written by commentators, who were occasionally disinterested, but more generally extremely opinionated. Derbforgaill, wife of Tigernan Ua Ruairc, king of Breifne, is best-remembered for having supposedly sparked the Norman invasion of Ireland, according to Anglo-Norman and later Irish sources. Derbforgaill and the three Gormlaiths have been portrayed in various literary texts as either abductees or colluders in their own physical removals; as a result, some literary critics and historians have also read them as such. Here, Preston-Matto argues that Derbforgaill's abduction and its literary representation are two separate things; in other words, that the historical and legal events surrounding the abduction have very little in common with the literature which takes those events as its focal point. She further proposes that Derbforgaill and the three Gormlaiths were used as political hostages, thus making the phantom agency ascribed to them in literary texts even more spectral.