Stolen Sheep and Wandering Cows: Reclaiming Lost and Stolen Property in Early Medieval Ireland and Britain
Lecture by Charlene Eska
Given at the Oxford Centre for Early Medieval Britain and Ireland on May 17, 2023
Abstract: In this lecture, Professor Eska offers a comparative analysis of early Irish and British legal texts and contextualizes them within broader legal traditions. Her talk takes as its starting point the legal process of reclaiming lost and stolen property in the newly-discovered fragmentary early Irish legal text Aidbred ‘Claiming’. The process described in this text is used as a basis for examining similar, yet different, procedures found in other legal texts from early medieval Britain with an aim towards answering whether any similarities are the result of borrowing or simply commonsense solutions to the same problems. The same process is then examined in other medieval European legal texts as a means of putting the medieval Irish and British material within its wider historical and legal context.
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Charlene Eska is a professor of English and Linguistics at Virginia Tech
Top Image: Bodleian Library MS. Douce 195 fol. 144v
Stolen Sheep and Wandering Cows: Reclaiming Lost and Stolen Property in Early Medieval Ireland and Britain
Lecture by Charlene Eska
Given at the Oxford Centre for Early Medieval Britain and Ireland on May 17, 2023
Abstract: In this lecture, Professor Eska offers a comparative analysis of early Irish and British legal texts and contextualizes them within broader legal traditions. Her talk takes as its starting point the legal process of reclaiming lost and stolen property in the newly-discovered fragmentary early Irish legal text Aidbred ‘Claiming’. The process described in this text is used as a basis for examining similar, yet different, procedures found in other legal texts from early medieval Britain with an aim towards answering whether any similarities are the result of borrowing or simply commonsense solutions to the same problems. The same process is then examined in other medieval European legal texts as a means of putting the medieval Irish and British material within its wider historical and legal context.
Charlene Eska is a professor of English and Linguistics at Virginia Tech
Top Image: Bodleian Library MS. Douce 195 fol. 144v
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