Contemporary Irish Literature and Cats

March 24th was cat day in Professor Lucy McDiarmid’s course in contemporary Irish literature.  To exploit the advantages of Zoom, students were invited to introduce their cats to the rest of the class.  Using a special anthology of Irish cat literature created for the occasion, students gave brief oral reports on cat-themed poems and stories.  It became clear to everyone that there is a  strong  intertextual cat tradition, from the famous  “Pangur Bán,” a monk’s poem to his cat, written in the margins of a religious manuscript, through to the present day.