To bee or not to bee : the bee in medieval Irish literature and society

Abstract

Much of the pre-existing research on the literary symbol of the bee is based on the extensive corpus of continental European bee literature. Comparatively little research has been done on the bee in medieval Ireland, however. Although there is no existing corpus of bee-literature, bees are mentioned in a large variety of literary sources including annals, saga literature, poetry, saints’ lives, legal texts, calendars, and in placenames. What then was the medieval Irish understanding of bees and how do bees appear in medieval Ireland? What image do the writings of medieval Ireland paint of the honeybee and what purpose does this image serve? Through a comparative literary and historicist approach, this thesis will look at the bee in medieval Irish society, and at medieval Irish society through the bee. This will be achieved by analyzing primary literary and legal sources that refer to bees, in order to determine what they tell us about beekeeping practices in medieval Ireland on the one hand, and how the portrait of the bee can be seen as a commentary on medieval Irish society on the other.