The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel Kingship and Narrative Artistry in a Mediaeval Irish Saga

Dr Ralph O'Connor studied Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic and English Literature at the University of Cambridge before becoming a Junior Research Fellow in Irish and Icelandic Literature at St John's College, Cambridge. He is currently a Lecturer in Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen, where he teaches in the departments of Celtic, History, and English. He has published widely on mediaeval Irish and Icelandic and modern British literature. His previous books are Icelandic Histories and Romances (Tempus, 2002), The Earth on Show: Fossils and the Poetics of Popular Science (Chicago, 2007), which won two international book prizes in 2008, and Science as Romance (Pickering & Chatto, 2012).

Acknowledgements
Note on quotations
List of illustrations
Introduction
1. The text and its authors; or, how to write a saga
2. A child of the Otherworld
3. The plunderers' dilemma
4. The road to Da Derga's Hostel
5. The house of death
6. The perfect spy
7. Sovereignty shattered
8. The Latin dimension: classical and biblical influence
9. Conaire, Saul, and sacred kingship
10. The message of the Togail: tract or tragedy?
11. Afterword: reading the Togail