This book explores the reception of the medieval Irish tradition of fantastic journey tales in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, C.S. Lewis's The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Umberto Eco's Baudolino, and the science fiction television franchises Star Trek and Stargate. In doing so, the book opens the door to a new history of literary reception, using Old Irish genre categories to analyse post-medieval texts. It aims to show that there is a family of texts produced in the post-medieval period that are heirs of the medieval Irish literary tradition of fantastic voyage narratives and that using Old Irish genre categories to analyse post-medieval works can open up new perspectives in our understanding of these works.
Natalia I. Petrovskaia holds MA, MPhil and PhD degrees from the University of Cambridge. She is Assistant Professor in Celtic at Utrecht University. Her recent publications include This is Not a Grail Romance. Understanding Historia Peredur vab Efrawc (University of Wales Press, 2023).
Contents
Acknowledgements Figures and Table Abbreviations
1 Introduction: These Are the Voyagesâ¦
â1.1 The Old Irish âGenre Systemâ, Otherworlds, and Utopias
â1.2 The Tropological Mode
â1.3 The Intertextual Matrix
â1.4 Structure and Route
2 C. S. Lewis, the Dawn Treader, and St Brendan
â2.1 C. S. Lewisâs Dialogic Imagination
â2.2 The Dawn Treader and Fourfold Interpretation
3 Umberto Eco, âRealityâ and Prester John
â3.1 Creating and Following the Footsteps of Saint Brendan
â3.2 Umberto Ecoâs Construction of Space
â3.3 Making the Incredulous Reader Believe in the Fantastic
4 Jonathan Swift, the Echtra and the Immram Tradition â4.1 Swift and Allegorical Reading
â4.2 Swiftâs Real-World Framework
â4.3 Gulliverâs Islands and the Problems of Utopia
5 Star Trek as Immram, and âSpace, the Final Frontierâ¦â â5.1 Planets as Islands
â5.2 âOptimism, Captain!â Rowing-about with Cheer
â5.3 These are the Immrama of the Starship Echtra
6 Stargate as an Echtra Narrative â6.1 Stargateâs Planetary Otherworlds
â6.2 Stargate Ustopias
â6.3 Postcolonial Echtrai
7 Conclusion
Bibliography Index
Academic institutes, researchers and postgraduates in the following subjects: Celtic Studies, Medieval Literature, Literary Studies, Reception Studies, Irish Studies, Medievalism, Media Studies.