Type: Article
Watson, Seosamh. ‘Aortha: Ainmhithe agus Eile. (The Irish satirist’s power over animals and others)’, Eighteenth-century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 1 (1986), pp 89-95.
This article is in Irish. Watson considers the honoured position of poets in early Irish society : a position partially based on an almost universal fear of their power to satirize. The satire followed certain conventions, and this paper deals with some of these conventions, especially the characterisation of the victims as animals. The survival of Irish poetic satire into the post-classical period is also studied using examples of satires composed in south-east Ulster in the middle of the eighteenth century.