Ireland and the Renaissance Court

This volume sheds fresh light on Irish courts and court culture in the age of the European Renaissance. It contains chapters written by historians and literary scholars working with English, Irish and Latin sources. It is divided into three thematic and roughly chronological sections. The first, 'Indigenous court society in Ireland', considers the European aspects of Gaelic and Gaelicized aristocratic courts prior to the revolutionary religious and political changes instituted by Henry VIII. Looking back as far as the mid-fifteenth century, it demonstrates how Irish elite society was developing in ways similar to those found in England and on the continent. Part II, 'Made in Whitehall: Irish policy and a regnal court', argues that London, rather than viceregal Dublin, must be seen as the center for policy making in the new kingdom of Ireland. How that policy was created, debated, and implemented - or not - is surveyed from both English and Irish viewpoints. The third and concluding section, 'Positioning Ireland in the Renaissance court world', sets Irish élite culture within the broader dynamics of the late Renaissance. Its chapters reveal some of the ways in which Irish people, both at home and abroad, participated in an emergent, multi-lingual republic of letters and transnational intellectual community. Ireland and the Renaissance court is an essential guide to the European aspects of Irish high politics and society and, conversely, the Irish and Gaelic elements of the Renaissance world.