Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
New Book Explores Links between Death and Social Memory in Medieval Ireland
Historian Joanna MacGugan delves into the stories behind coroners and capital punishment.
Dublin, Ireland, October 13, 2023—Four Courts Press, Ireland’s leading academic book publisher, today announced the release of Social Memory, Reputation and the Politics of Death in the Medieval Irish Lordship, the first book by medieval historian Joanna MacGugan, PhD. Death and dying have long been popular subjects among medieval historians, but Ireland is often overlooked in the scholarship. MacGugan’s book takes medieval death studies in new directions using records from the English government, which ruled Dublin and much of Ireland’s eastern seaboard as a lordship from the late twelfth century.
MacGugan focuses on the social practices and relationships at the heart of the lordship’s legal culture, exploring who decided what passed for “truth” in legal contexts and uncovering the shared experiences and social memories behind those decisions. The study is grounded in the popular notion that “all politics are local politics” and the idea that control over administrative aspects of death—the coroner’s jurisdiction and sentences of capital punishment, specifically—offered certain political advantages.
“These cases show us that everyday people had more influence over the course of criminal justice than a traditional ‘top-down’ approach to history might convey because it’s all about who controls the story,” MacGugan explains. “It was the people who lived and worked alongside both killers and victims, the neighbors who knew every feud they were involved in, who were the most trusted sources for the justices’ decisions—and this was their superpower.”
In Social Memory, MacGugan uncovers some of the dramatic, unnatural deaths—deaths that shattered communities and imprinted on social memory—that fell within a coroner’s jurisdiction. The author also explores the social networks and motivations behind jurors’ decisions to send members of their own communities to the gallows. Sentencing for homicides, specifically, involved debates over the ethnicity of victims because the consequences for murdering an Irish person were far less than for murdering an English person.
Threaded throughout is an emphasis on how the English of Ireland adapted longstanding oral culture to achieve their goals and assert greater authority over legal aspects of death. The sources highlight how they capitalized on social memory in a period when surging violence threatened the English colony.
In these medieval innovations, modern readers will see parallels with the persistence of oral culture in our own lives. We have never stopped adapting and remaking oral culture, as witnessed by the popularity of radio plays in the 20th century and audio books and podcasts today.
Social Memory blends many overlapping themes: death and dying, medieval city life, colonialism, criminal justice, and the evolving relationships between orality and literacy. The author provides the relevant historical background for more general audiences who may not be familiar with medieval Ireland.
“I’m keen to get this book into libraries so others can build on this research,” MacGugan said. “These court rolls have so many more stories to tell us about life and death in medieval Ireland.”
MacGugan is available for podcast interviews and bookshop, library, and university lectures.
Social Memory can be purchased from Four Courts Press, which ships worldwide: https://www.fourcourtspress.ie/books/2023/social-memory-reputation-and-the-politics-of-death-in-the-medieval-irish-lordship/
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About Joanna MacGugan
Joanna MacGugan grew up in Chelmsford, Massachusetts; Stuttgart, Germany; and Huntingdonshire, England. She discovered a deep love for history when she was an undergraduate at the University of Alabama. She earned an MA in history from the University of Massachusetts, Boston and a PhD in medieval studies from the University of Connecticut. Four Courts Press published her transformed dissertation in 2023. MacGugan is currently a copy editor with Dragonfly Editorial and an independent scholar. Her current research focuses on social memory and reputation in early modern witchcraft trials.
About Four Courts Press
Four Courts Press was founded in 1970 by Michael Adams as a small press. From 1992, Four Courts Press expanded rapidly from its theology base, first into Celtic and Medieval Studies and Ecclesiastical History, and then into Modern History, Art, Literature and Law. The Press publishes some 40 titles a year. At present there are over 800 titles in print. Our books are available worldwide, either directly via our website or through an extensive chain of bookstores, libraries and book wholesalers. All books are peer reviewed.