*Research Activity I: conduct more thorough research on these figures, and determine which (if any) might have deserved both the labels of saint and sinner given what we know about their lives. In the narratives of saints lives, how are the two related? Can we see any parallels between the lives of the saints and lives of the novels characters?

*Research Activity II: explore some recent work by contemporary Irish poets writing in English (or translated into English) and see how many references you can find to these three figures. How do they tend to be used in these contemporary settings? What role do they play in the works? What do they make possible for the poet to imagine or create in his/her poems? Are there strikingly different uses of the material in different poets? What might account for such differences? Is the identity of the poet an important factor? How significant is a sense of history to these works? These questions and others of your own should help you to craft an argument in a longer analytic paper that examines either (a) the treatment of one saint by several different poets, or (b) the treatment of several different saints by one poet.