P.H. Pearse and Thomas MacDonagh: a literary friendship

ABSTRACT

Tracing the relationship between P.H. [Patrick Henry] Pearse (1879–1916) and Thomas MacDonagh (1878–1916), this essay explores the impact their friendship had on their careers as writers and critics. Their work together in St Enda’s, the school for boys founded by Pearse in 1908, provides a significant context for this exploration. There, while working with MacDonagh, Pearse made drama an important part of school life and started writing plays for public performance. Meanwhile, their collaboration in putting together the St. Enda’s school journal, An Macaomh (1909–1913), helped to hone MacDonagh’s skills as a literary critic and to prepare for his later editorial role at the Irish Review (1911–1914). Attention then turns to how MacDonagh’s views on Irish literature and his translations from Old Irish influenced his friend’s development as both a critic and poet. Paticular consideration is paid to “Mise Éire”, one of Pearse’s best-known poems. Finally, similarities are considered between MacDonagh and the hero of The Wandering Hawk (1915–1916), Pearse’s unfinished, English-language, school story for children. Taken together, these various investigations reveal that, despite differing temperaments and at times divergent approaches to Irish writing, Pearse and MacDonagh enjoyed a mutually stimulating friendship that impacted positively on their literary careers.     

Pure and impure gestes: the generation of history in Jean d’Outremeuse's Myreur des histors

ABSTRACT

Scholars have long debated the place in medieval historiography of Jean d’Outremeuse's Myreur des histors, a universal history in celebration of Liège written in French around 1399. The abundance of Old French epic material in a chronicle that, according to its author, contained translations of only Latin sources, was once a source of outrage. The Myreur now holds significant interest, however, for its evidence of late medieval narrative strategies. This study demonstrates the Myreur's deliberate adaptation of epic material to glorify Liège. The author reimagines the Carolingian past as a source for future historical narratives by knowingly altering the genealogical framework of the chanson de geste universe. Carrying tales of sexual impurity, he describes the demise of the Carolingian line and transforms figures from epic to function within his linear history. This inventive approach allowed him to create a new hero- and history-generating lineage for his universal history.     

Model studies in computer seriation

A computer model is described which generates artificial incidence matrices, with statistical properties similar to those of a Merovingian cemetery, but with a known chronological order.These matrices are used to test the effectiveness of various seriation procedures. Both permutation search and multi-dimensional scaling methods are investigated. The effects of various similarity matrix transformations are also discussed.     

Newspaper Reporting on Climate Change,Green Energy and Carbon Reduction Strategies across Canada 1999–2009

Canada’s climate change strategy faces an uncertain future since the country’s withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol in 2011, making domestic public debate and awareness critical in the search for effective mitigation policies. This article presents a spatio-temporal analysis of newspaper reporting across Canada on climate change and carbon reduction approaches, ranging from renewable energies (solar, wind, hydro power) to carbon management (e.g., carbon capture and storage [CCS]) and economic approaches (e.g., carbon trade, ecological fiscal reform). The findings of a news article keyword analysis show that the overall growth of the Canadian news coverage during this time period was significantly fragmented into isolated peaks of activity rather than continuous growth of the topic of climate change. Furthermore, the study finds a strong news emphasis on technology- and growth-oriented solutions as opposed to a comprehensive ecological modernization that would encourage a deeper structural discussion about Canada’s much-criticized carbon-intensive energy economy.