Ireland in the Renaissance, C.1540-1660

Book excerpt: This book brings to life the cross-currents of European 'Renaissance' culture in Ireland, primarily outside the Pale. Essays focus on institutions such as Peter White's grammar school in Kilkenny; monuments, including the funeral art of Kilkenny and Lord Deputy Sir Henry Sidney's decorated stone bridge at Athlone; buildings such as the fortified houses of Laois-Offaly, the decorated Butler mansion at Carrick-on-Suir, and Sir Walter Raleigh's house in Youghal; maps, including the sinister colonial cartography of Richard Bartlett; texts such as Counter-Reformation polemic and nationalist historiography, women's writing from the 1641 rebellion, and the published Dublin celebrations of King Charles II's Restoration.