Human Frontiers in Medieval Irish Religious Literature

Abstract

In this essay I will explore ideas of gender as expressed in early medieval Irish religious literature with respect to the potentialities suggested by an inherited notion of a “genderless” Christian eschatological body. Medieval Irish writers put some intellectual energy into coming to terms with the notion of “gender,” both as biologically and socioculturally defined, with respect to Christian theology. I believe that the alternative to male/female dimorphism suggested by Christian canonical scriptural authority and Christian practice had an effect on early Irish textual outputs. In this essay I will look at the various ways in which this effect was manifested, and what characterized it. Further, I will discuss the role of text as a medium for transformation in addition to its role as a record of transformative processes: in other words, the techno-poetic quality of text in gender construction in the medieval Irish context will be observed, and moreover presented as consonant with the ongoing, creative techno-poetic enterprise that human beings use to define and transform themselves in their “life-world” generally. To this end, I have taken what some might call a “phenomenological” view in analyzing the artifacts here presented, and I have called this essay “Human Frontiers in Medieval Irish Religious Literature” to make a particular point about the techno-poetic enterprise, even as it relates to notions of gender in medieval Ireland.