Insula/Islands/Ireland: The Classical World and The Mediterranean (1996), containing the Proceedings of IASIL 1994 in Sardinia, appeared in June of 1996-and it may be that we were remiss in not bringing it to New York for display and sale at Hosfstra. Great credit is due to Pino Serpillo, our host on that intensely interesting and agreeable occasion, for the quality of the published outcome. This a volume of 388 handsomely designed pages published by Tema (Italy) under the imprint of the University of Sassari, and bearing the design of the Conference wallet-one of the most striking ever issued for an IASIL Conference-on its resilient paper cover. 1,000 copies of the book were printed and it is to be expected that these will be requisitioned for the libraries of all IASIL members in order to sustain the reputation of the Association no less as an international audience for illuminations on Irish writing than as a source of same.
All participants will remember how convincingly the thrust of the Conference theme worked its way through so many of the papers, demonstrating in an immediate way the similarity of insular experiences and the links between Ireland and Mediterranean civilization. Even in prehistory resemblances were compelling. Besides the title-subject, the conference papers cover such general themes as 'Gods Heroes and Voyagers', 'Lands of Sunshine and Lands of Mist', 'Classical Paradigms and the Irish Theatre', 'Insularity and its Cultural Manifestations', Commencing with Anthony Johnson's plenary lecture in the form of a detailed reading of Yeats's poem 'The Statues', and the keynote addresses of Brian Arkins (on 'Greek and Roman Themes in Modern Irish Literature') and Robert Welch ('The Voyage Theme in Irish Literature'), the sessions fanned out to embrace such a wide variety of themes and authors that one can only hope to cover them by omitting one or the other, as in the followingn condensed list of contents: Tom Murphy (Jochem Achilles; Martin Croghan), Kate O'Brien (Margarita G. Bon), Eva Gore-Booth and Esther Roper (Rosangela Barone), Mary Lavin (Giovanna Tallone), Flann O'Brien (Concetta Mazzullo), W. B. Yeats (Jefferson Holdridge; Jacqueline Genet; Elena Cotta Ramusino), Elizabeth Connor (Wanda Balzano), John Hewitt (Britta Olinder; Giuliana Bendelli), Sean O'Faolain (Marie Arndt), Elizabeth Bowen (Motoko Ono), Egypt in Irish Poetry (Mary Massoud), Thomas Moore (Samira Basta), Early Celtic Mediterranean Connections (James Doan), James Joyce (Richard Wall; Barbara Freitag; Thomas Kullmann; Donald E. Morse), John McGahern (Giuliana Bendelli), Derek Mahon (Enrico Reggiani), Paul Muldoon (Carol Tell), Bernard Shaw (Rodelle Weintraub; Stanley Weintraub), Brian Friel (Christa Velten; Csilla Bertha; Elena Capecchi); Seamus Heaney's drama (Colin Meir); Eugene O'Neill (Taketoshi Furomoto), Charles Lever (Peter Denman), Beckett and tragedy (Rónan McDonald), The Blasket Islands (Joan FitzGerald), J. M. Synge (Laura Sanna), Lafcadio Hearn (George Hughes), Louis MacNeice (Alistair Walker), Thomas Kinsella (Donatella Abbate Badin), Beckett and Coetzee (Nicholas Meihuizen), Jennifer Johnston (Carla De Petris), Charles Robert Maturin (Gráinne Elmore) and-strangely little addressed on this occasion-Contemporary Irish Poetry (Michael Faherty). The volume lacks an index but is suitably annotated at the end of each essay.
IASIL Japan has issued The Harp: IASAIL-Japan Bulletin, Vol. XI (Osaka 1996), being papers of the Twelfth Annual Conference, conducted in Sept-1 Oct. 1995 at Seijo University, Tokyo. Contributions came from Robert Welch (''Insulae/Islands: Insularity in Irish Writing'); Youngmin Kim ('Talking Cure and Yeats's Poetry'); George Martin, Jr. ('Fathers and Sons in Jim Sheridan's Films'), Joseph O'Leary ('The Musical Sturcture of "The Dead"'), Ayami Yoshida ('Women in Jennifer Johnston's Novels'), and Rie Hara ('Women having Power of Speech in Yeats's Crazy Jane Poems'). Yasushi Hirata, Hiroko Mikami, and Yoko Sano offered interpretations of Frank McGuinness's plays Carthaginians, Someone Who'll Watch Over Me, and Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching towards the Somme respectively. A concluding book review warmly praised Marie Heaney's Over the Nine Waves: A Book of Irish Legends (Faber 1994) for its accessible language, its interesting details, and its revitalisation of the 'unchanging reality' of the ancient Irish cycles, making adroit comparison with the versions by Lady Gregory.