James Carney

Life
1914-1989 [James Patrick Carney; gl. Séamus Ó Ceithearnaigh]; b. 17 May 1914, Portlaoise; son of customs office; suffered death of his father; moved to Dublin and ed. at CBS Synge St.; BA in Celtic Studies, UCD 1935); post-grad. studies under Rudolf Thurneysen in Bonn; returned to Ireland and joined Leabhair ó láimhsgríbhnibh project under Gerard Murphy, editing the Irish trans. of Regimen Sanitas by Mayno de Mayneri (d.1368); m. Máire [Mary Ellen] Ní Mhuirgheasa, with whom he co-authored Sgealta romansuiochta (1952); appt. to newly-created visiting chair of Celtic studies in Uppsala, 1950-52, and taught at UCLA, 1965-66; also gave winter courses at QUB (Belfast); appt. Prof. Irish in Dublin Inst. for Advanced Studies (DIAS); criticised ‘nativist’ reading of early Irish literature held contentious position that St. Patrick arrived in Ireland later than the usually-assigned fifth-century date; a son, Paul Carney, became a High-Court judge. DIW OCIL RIA

Bibliographical details
ed., Poems of Blathmac Son of Cu Brettan and the Irish Gospel of Thomas [ITS, 96] (Dublin: Educational Text Co. for ITS 1964), xxxix, 170pp. [being selections from the 17th cent. MS G 50 in the National Library of Ireland, formerly MS 10276 in the collection of Sir Thomas Phillips; Gospel of Thomas (infancy Gospel) and poems on the Virgin Mary; parallel texts in Old Irish and English; of which Poems of Blathmac, pp.1-88.]

ed., Early Irish Poetry [Thomas Davis Lects. / RTE winter 1959-60] (Cork: Mercier Press [1965]), 99pp. CONTENTS: M. Dillon, ‘Early lyric poetry’, by by F. J. Byrne, ‘Latin poetry in Ireland’; Carney, ‘Poems of Blathmac, son of Cu̇ Brettan’; M. O Daly, ‘The metrical dindshenchas’, D. Greene, ‘The religious epic’; A. O’Sullivan, ‘Giolla Brighde Mac Con Midhe’.

ed., Celtic Studies: Essays in Memory of Angus Matheson, 1912-1962 , with David Greene (London: Routledge K. Paul 1969), 182pp., ills., map [bi-ling.]. CONTENTS: S. Mac Ghilleathain, ‘Ach-an-Dà Theàrnaidh: Publications of Angus Matheson (p.ix-x)’; J.W. Bannerman, ‘The Dál Riata and Northern Ireland in the sixth and seventh centuries’; C.H. Borgström, ‘Notes on Gaelic grammar’; Carney, ‘Two poems from Acallam na SenÓórach’; N[ora] K. Chadwick, ‘Dreams in early European literature’; Greene, ‘The Gaelic of Carioway, Isle of Lewis’; D.G. Howells, ‘prepositions with verbal nouns’; K. Jackson, ‘The breaking of original long ē in Scottish Gaelic’; T. McCaughey, ‘Ní bhfuil’; K. MacDonald, ‘Unpublished verse by Sìlis Ní Mhic Raghnaill na Ceapaich’; N. N. Shéaghdha, ‘Notes on some scribal terms’; B[rian] Ó. Cuiv, ‘A poem attributed to Muireadhach Ó Dálaigh’; M. O. Daly, ‘Úar in Lathe do Lum Laine’; M. Oftedal, ‘Some sources of error in linguistic field work’; A. O’Sullivan, ‘Verses on honorific portions’; E. I. Rowlands, ‘Iolo Goch’; D. S. Thomson, ‘The Harlaw Brosnachadh: an early fifteenth-century literary curio’; R. L. Thomson, ‘Edward Lhuyd in the Isle of Man?

sel. & trans., Medieval Irish Lyrics: A Study in the Relationship of Poet and Patron, with The Irish Bardic Poet (Portlaoise: Dolmen Press 1985), xxxii, 140pp. [Publ. note: The Irish bardic poet, a study in the relationship of poet and patron as exemplified in the persons of the poet, Eochaidh Ó hEoghusa (O'Hussey) and his various patrons, mainly members of the Maguire family of Fermanagh, given as the statutory public lecture of the Celtic School of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 20 March 1958].

[ top ]

Criticism
[Donncadha] Ó Corráin, Breatnach, and McCone eds., Sages, Saints and Storytellers, Celtic Studies in Honour of Professor James Carney (Maynooth: An Sagart 1989), 490pp.; Fergus Kelly and Michelle O Riordan, eds., Celtica vol. XXIII: Essays in Honour of James Patrick Carney ([Dublin]: School of Celtic Studies, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies 1999), 435pp.

See also Lesa Ni Mhunghaile, ‘James Patrick Carney’, in Dictionary of Irish Biography (RIA/Cambridge U. 2004; dig. 2009 - available online.

Commentary
Gerry Smyth, Decolonisation and Criticism: The Construction of Irish Literature (London: Pluto Press 1998) - remarks on Carney’s edition of the Book of the O’Reillys and his Studies in Irish Literature: ‘By holding out the promise of a true Irish tradition, professional scholarly discourse in Ireland in the 1950s left itself open to annexation by the conservative and reationary elements in the country who had already hijacked the revolution and now needed weapons to ward off the various challenges to their version of national history. With their professional aloofness and apparent conclusiveness, texts like Carney’s were ideal weapons in such hegemonic encounters as they revealed the tradition of Irish literature (and the political structures which it implied) to be a fait accompli.’ (p.165). See also Smyth’s discussion of The Poem Book of the O’Reillys (p.127).

References
Cathach Books (1996-97) lists The Problem of St. Patrick (1961, 1973).

[ top ]