Please join the Keough-Naughton Institute and the English Department for a lecture by Irish Critic-in-Residence, Dr. Radvan Markus.
Abstract
The diary of Amhlaoibh Ó Súilleabháin, composed between 1827 and 1835 in Callan, Co. Kilkenny, is a unique text, one of the few substantial prose works written in the Irish language in the nineteenth century. Its scope is remarkable, reflecting on the author’s interest in local history, economy and politics, foreign affairs, folk sayings and customs, meteorology, astronomy, botany and ornithology – not to mention good food and drink. In the composition of the diary, Ó Súilleabháin was involved in many processes of cultural negotiation and translation, whether he searched for a path between Enlightenment natural science, Romantic aesthetics and native Irish understanding of nature, or wrote about international events covered in English-language newspapers. Despite the fact that Irish was in decline at his time and the language revival still lay far in the future, the text displays multiple features typical of contemporaneous European revival movements – most significantly, the diarist’s effort to create or standardize native scientific terminology across a number of fields. A key feature of Ó Súilleabháin’s work is an element of play (as defined by Johan Huizinga), which is, according to the Czech literary historian Vladimír Macura, typical of revival movements in general. The diary is not only an important historical document, but also a literary work that still speaks to the present with a surprisingly relatable voice.
About Radvan Markus
Radvan Markus is associate professor in the Irish language and literature at Charles University, Prague. He is the author of Carnabhal na Marbh: Cré na Cille agus Litríocht an Domhain (2023), which was awarded the ACIS Prize for Books in the Irish Language, and Echoes of the Rebellion: The Year 1798 in Twentieth-Century Irish Fiction and Drama (2015). He has published widely on modern(ist) Irish-language prose and drama, focusing on the work of Pádraic Ó Conaire, Micheál Mac Liammóir, Flann O’Brien, Máirtín Ó Cadhain, Biddy Jenkinson and others. He also translates from Irish to Czech, his translation of Máirtín Ó Cadhain’s Cré na Cille won the prestigious Magnesia Litera award in 2018. His current research interests include the representations of nature in Irish-language literature of all periods. Apart from his academic work, he is also an active musician, performing Irish traditional music in the band Conamara Chaos, founded in 2017. He is the inaugural Irish Critic-in-Residence at the University of Notre Dame, on campus for the spring 2026 semester.
Originally published at irishstudies.nd.edu.