Aaron Keane

Aaron Keane is a PhD candidate at the School of English, Irish, & Communication. His research interests include Old English and Latin Religious Scripture, Irish Mythology, and Gendered Identity. Latin Etymology and Grammar. Old English Textual Transmission and Cultural Identity.

Project Title

Breoton is Garsecgs Ealond: Christian Reiteration or Old English Enlightenment? Adaptation, Material Culture, and Influence in the Old English Orosius and Bede.

Project Description

The Old English Orosius and Bede are comparable with their original Latin counterparts, especially concerning their literary terms. However, the former are in fact a far more English-centric approach to history, with a focus on local saints in the Old English Bede, and a revision of history as seen in the OE Orosius. 

These texts, while often dismissed by scholars as inferior and intended for an unenlightened audience, are in fact worthy of equal praise. This is especially the case with the inclusion of occasional poetic phrases, with the translator consciously reworking the texts into a style more familiar to an Old English audience. One example of a creative adaptation of the text is the change of paruissimo spatio (‘a very short period’) to an eagan byrhtm (‘the world is blind’) in the famous sparrow episode of Bede’s original text. (Bede, Book II) This demonstrates that they were not merely translating the text; rather, they were adapting it for its intended readers, while maintaining that connection to the vernacular Latin and to the original Roman audience in the case of Orosius. There is also the inclusion of dramatic speeches in the OE Orosius, noted by Malcolm Godden (2016), further reinforcing this epic-like interpretation of the Latin texts. 

This thesis will examine the OE and original Latin to demonstrate why they were creatively adapted in this manner. This will be achieved by examining the material culture, poetic/dramatic speech inclusions, and the way in which the texts were adapted to fit a particularly English viewpoint. By doing so, this thesis hopes to demonstrate that the changes made in the OE reinforce the idea that a Christian perspective of the world and its history can, in fact, be adapted to an Old English narrative.

Supervisors

Dr. Carrie Griffin (UL) and Professor Tom Birkett (UCC).

Publications

• Bachelor’s Thesis: “The Philosopher King: Wisdom, Eternal Knowledge and Epistemology in King Alfred’s Old English Religious Texts”.
• Master’s Thesis: “Gendered Ideas of Mythic National Identity from the Mid-Nineteenth Century to the Early Twentieth”.
• RTE Article: A Land of Milk and Honey: Why St Bede had the Hots for Ireland.
• Village Green FRMSI Blog Post - Old English Reading Groups.
• Blog Post: Alfred the Great and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle - Textual Cultures: Old and Middle English Literature at Limerick.
• PhD Pulse- #20 with Aaron Keane.

Professional Memberships

FRMSI, TOEBI, Centre For Early Modern Studies, Limerick, and ISSEME.

Awards and Honours

Limerick Centre for Early Modern Studies - BA Dissertation Prize (2023).

Courses

Bachelor of Arts in English and History, and Master of Arts in History.