Freitag, Barbara

Dr. Barbara Freitag holds a Ph.D in English Studies from Hamburg University. She was a Lecturer in Intercultural studies at Dublin City University, Ireland.

A New Interpretation of Irish Round Towers: Their Secular Origin and Function in the Tenth to Twelfth Centuries

2018 1-4955-0637-1
This study challenges all of Petrie's assertions that Irish Round towers were simply places for Irish Monks to store their valuables and proposes a radically new understanding of the Irish round tower. It is guided by Martin Carver's hypothesis regarding early medieval monumentality, and by his three essential questions - 'Why that? Why there? Why then?' - this study deploys historic, annalistic, architectural, literary, and linguistic evidence to establish a secular origin and function for the towers and to situate them as products of the period between the tenth and twelfth centuries.