Singing Ideas

Chapter 1. Singing Ideas: An Alternative History of Thought





(Un)doing History: The Authority of Literacy and the Performativity of Thought

Oral Trouble and Women's Voices: Searching for Intellectual

Traditions Beyond the Written Word

Singing Politics and Power in Society: Some Comparative Examples

Seizing Agency: Women of Song

Beyond the Limits of Textuality: Performing the Past and Performing Thought



Chapter 2. 'Where Everything Trembles in the Balance': Song as a Liminal Ludic Space





The Theory of Liminality

Performing Liminality: Poetry as a Symbolic Marker for Liminality in the Irish Tradition

A Journey to the Sacred and Back: The Liminality of the Aisling (Vision)

Song and Oral Poetic Performance as Ritual

Separating from the Profane: Ekstasis and Song

Moments of Potentiality: The Antistructure of Melody and Verse in the Irish Tradition

The Ritual Powers of (Song) Poetry: Satire, Insult and Fearlessness

The Potentiality of the Play-Sphere: The Challenging Discourse of Song

The Singer of Ideas as 'Seer of Communitas': The Liminality of Song and the Generation of Ideas



Chapter 3. Singing Parrhesia: Maire Bhui Ni Laeire, Song Performance and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Ireland





Maire Bhui Ni Laeire: Nineteenth-Century Song Poet

Irish-Language Song-Making: Poetry as Performance and the Aesthetics of Orality

Multiformity and Oral Formulaic Techniques

Local Agrarian Agitation and the Creation of the Poetic Radical

Crisis and Charisma: The Song Poet as Prophet and Truth-Teller

Identity and the Aesthetics of Orality: New Ideas and the Narrative of Belonging

Framing the Revolution: Performing Antistructure and the Vision of the Revolution through Song

From Generation to Generation to Regeneration: The Legacy of Ideas through Song



Conclusion: Singing Ideas in Society: Experience, Song and 'Passing Through'



Appendix of Songs and Lore



Bibliography

Index