About

My naIMG_20150408_153509251me is James Daly. I am currently studying an MA in Medieval and Renaissance English in University College Cork. I reluctantly set up this blog as an outlet for my research in the area early English and Norse literature, culture and music.

After completing my undergraduate degree in Music and English in University College Cork in 2015, I finally gave up on the pipe dream of becoming a rock star and somehow thought becoming a Viking would be more attainable. Unfortunately these days this involves more than simply drinking mead and pillaging which has resulted in me having to undertake the research I shall be using this blog as an outlet for instead.

I aim to explore performativity in early English and Scandinavian literature and in turn what it teaches us about political and cultural contexts, gender roles, music and the boundaries performance creates and enforces within a culture. I am also keenly interested in adaptations of these originally performed texts by both the manuscript culture that consumed them and modern reinterpretations of these earlier styles, particularly in the area of music. Unfortunately I lack the focus to stick to these specific areas so do not be surprised to find unrelated articles posted that do nothing more than plot my slow decline into madness.

This blog is an attempt to gather my disjointed thoughts into something vaguely cohesive in the hope of filling in some of the gaps in both our knowledge of Old English and Scandinavian culture and in the academic discourse that surrounds its study.There may be a finite number of texts available to us today as scholars in this area but this gives us space to ask big questions. This is useful because it makes it impossible to know everything in this field which is a great excuse for ones ignorance.This blog will track my journey throughout my postgraduate career as I explore early literature, music and my own abilities.

Thank you for visiting.

“Research consists in seeing what everyone else has seen, but thinking what no one else has thought” – Albert Szent-Gyorgyi.