New Publications by IASIL Members Welcome to the IASIL Members' New Publications Page. This page lists new publications that deal with Irish Literature, Theatre, and Film. Publications with broader themes that pay substantial attention to Irish writing will also be listed from time to time. If you wish to include a listing, email webmaster@iasil.org New Publications by IASIL Members, Updated 10 April, 2008 March - April 2008 Christopher Murray, Selected Plays of George Shiels Eugene McNulty, The Ulster Literary Theatre and the Northern Revival SUSPECT CULTURES Narrative, Identity & Citation in 1990s New Drama by Clare Wallace Irish Studies in Europe, Band 1 Too Smart to Be Sentimental: Contemporary Irish American Women Writers
June 2007 - February 2008 Postcolonial Text - Special Issue on Ireland Graham Dawson, Making Peace with the Past? Memory, Trauma and the Irish Troubles Morales Ladrón, Marisol, ed. Postcolonial and Gender Perspectives in Irish Studies. The Poetry of Eavan Boland: A Postcolonial Reading Pilar Villar-Argáiz Michael Parker Northern Irish Literature, 1956-2006 (2 Volume Pack) CL Innes, The Cambridge Introduction to Postcolonial Literatures in English Party Pieces: Oral Storytelling and Social Performance in Joyce and Beckett by Alan W. Friedman Yeats and Theosophy by Ken Monteith The Theatre of War: The First World War in British and Irish Drama, Heinz Kosok Ireland in the Renaissance, c.1540-1660 (Four Courts Press), Thomas Herron & Michael Potterton, editors Hilary Lennon (ed.), Frank O'Connor: Critical essays Thomas Herron, Spenser's Irish Work - Poetry, Plantation and Colonial Reformation Jacqueline Genet, La poésie de William Butler Yeats Francis Stuart: Artist and Outcast by Kevin Kiely Jonathan Bloom, The Art of Revision in the Short Stories of V. S. Pritchett and William Trevor Nation States by Michael Mays Seamus Heaney and the Emblems of Hope by Karen Marguerite Moloney Modern Irish Autobiography: Self, Nation and Society Edited by Liam Harte Reading Joyce by David Pierce
Other 2007 Publications To see a full details of publications from the first half of 2007, click on this link These pages are provided for information only - you should confirm prices, release dates, and contents with publishers.
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Eugene McNulty, The Ulster Literary Theatre and the Northern Revival (Cork University Press) Christopher Murray, Selected Plays of George Shiels George Shiels (1886-1949) was one of the most prolific and most successful playwrights in the history of the Abbey Theatre. Before his debut at the Abbey Shiels’s early work was staged by the Ulster Literary Theatre in Belfast and later on his work was taken up by the dynamic Group Theatre, also in Belfast. As a Northerner, Shiels embraced the whole island in his work, his use of dialect and his characterisation. Moreover, while his plays were broadly popular and wonderfully well suited to the acting talents of theatre companies North and South, his all-Ireland perspective lent his work a keen critical edge masked by easy realism and hilarious comedy. Nowadays, we turn to the dark comedy of a play like The Passing Day to re-adjust our view of Shiels and to see his plays as seriously concerned with the land question and issues of identity, gender and the law in post-colonial Ireland. From that perspective, The New Gossoon and in particular The Rugged Path (which broke box-office receipts at the Abbey in 1940) challenge us to look again at Shiels and see him as public commentator as well as consummate entertainer. The present collection attempts to facilitate this needed redefinition of Shiels’s place in the Irish dramatic canon. To that end it includes The Retrievers (1924), his first full-length political play, never before published, together with Professor Tim (1925), The New Gossoon (1930), The Passing Day (1936), The Rugged Path (1940) and its sequel The Summit (1941). JW Forster, IRISH NOVELS 1890-1940: NEW BEARINGS IN CULTURE AND FICTION ( Oxford: Oxford University Press). Description Studies of Irish fiction are still scanty in contrast to studies of Irish poetry and drama. Attempting to fill a large critical vacancy, Irish Novels 1890-1940 is a comprehensive survey of popular and minor fiction (mainly novels) published between 1890 and 1922, a crucial period in Irish cultural and political history. Since the bulk of these sixty-odd writers have never been written about, certainly beyond brief mentions, the book opens up for further exploration a literary landscape, hitherto neglected, perhaps even unsuspected. This new landscape should alter the familiar perspectives on Irish literature of the period, first of all by adding genre fiction (science fiction, detective novels, ghost stories, New Woman fiction, and Great War novels) to the Irish syllabus, secondly by demonstrating the immense contribution of women writers to popular and mainstream Irish fiction. Among the popular and prolific female writers discussed are Mrs J.H. Riddell, B.M. Croker, M.E. Francis, Sarah Grand, Katharine Tynan, Ella MacMahon, Katherine Cecil Thurston, W.M. Letts, and Hannah Lynch. Indeed, a critical inference of the survey is that if there is a discernible tradition of the Irish novel, it is largely a female tradition. A substantial postscript surveys novels by Irish women between 1922 and1940 and relates them to the work of their female antecedents. This ground-breaking survey should also alter the familiar perspectives on the Ireland of 1890-1922. Many of the popular works were problem-novels and hence throw light on contemporary thinking and debate on the 'Irish Question'. After the Irish Literary Revival and creation of the Free State, much popular and mainstream fiction became a lost archive, neglected evidence, indeed, of a lost Ireland. Readership: Students and teachers of Irish literature, particularly Irish fiction and Irish popular fiction; students and teachers of Irish women's literary and social studies Contents POSTSCRIPT: Women Novelists 1922-1940 SUSPECT CULTURES Narrative, Identity & Citation in 1990s New Drama by Clare Wallace Prague : Litteraria Pragensia, 2006 ISBN 80-7308-124-5 (paperback). 335pp. Price: € 12.00 (not including postage) http://litteraria.ff.cuni.cz/books/suspect_cultures.html "Mapping the state of contemporary theatre from the 1990s to the present, this volume focuses upon the work of six major dramatists to emerge at the end of the 20th century: Marina Carr, Martin McDonagh, Conor McPherson, Sarah Kane, Mark Ravenhill, and David Greig." Clare Wallace is a senior lecturer at Charles University, Prague, and at the University of New York, Prague. She has published articles on James Joyce Joyce, Marina Carr, Patrick McCabe and contemporary Irish and British drama. Her books include Monologues (ed. 2006) and Global Ireland (ed. with Ondrej Pilny, 2005). For more details about Litteraria Pragensia books, please visit www.litterariapragensia.com WHY IRISH? Irish Language and Literature in Academia, (ed.) Brian Ó Conchubhair ( Galway: Arlen House Press, 2008), ISBN: 978-1-903631-59-1 paperback, 233pp. These striking essays and detailed case studies by internationally renowned scholars examine the contributions of Irish language and literature to the Humanities. Providing a variety of close textual readings, broad ranging essays and appraisals of their disciplines, the authors demonstrate the value and potential of studying Irish at university level and suggest future challenges and research agendas. For both academic specialists and general readers, this volume offers not only illuminating close readings of medieval tales (Tochmarc Étaíne/The Wooing of Étaín) and Alan Titley’s contemporary novels (Meirscrí na Treibhe, Stiall Fhial Feola and An Fear Dána), but important surveys of the contemporary state of the language, a critique of the 20th-century revival project, a rationale for Government policy and the international promotion of Irish. Topics include Irish bardic poetry, Indo-European linguistics, comparative literature, language maintenance, socio-linguistics, and the Irish language in American Universities. Contributors: ‘Irish as a World Language’ James McCloskey ( University of California, Santa Cruz) ‘Myth and Saga: The Wooing of Étaín’
Contributors: Marion Castleberry, Brian Cliff, Joan Fitzpatrick Dean, Maria Doyle, Laura Eldred, José Lanters, Patrick Lonergan, Stephanie Pocock, Richard Rankin Russell, Karen Vandevelde The back cover endorsements: "Is McDonagh to be considered a self-consciously postmodern parodist, an ethical satirist or an anarchic cultural bother-boy? This volume of new, informed, and well-argued essays will enable readers to make up their own minds." Nicholas Grene, Trinity College, Dublin "These lucid, informed and perceptive essays convincingly articulate the global reach of McDonagh's plays and establish him as a world dramatist." Anthony Roche, University College, Dublin Irish Studies in Europe, Band 1 Werner Huber, Michael Böss, Catherine Maignant, Hedwig Schwall (eds.) Trier ( Germany): WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2007 To order, please see http://www.wvttrier.de ISBN 978-3-88476-898-0, 180 pp., € 20,00 (2007) Ireland : Representation and Responsibility Irish Studies in Europe is the title of a new series of publications in Irish Studies. The thematic and methodological range of this projected series is meant to go well beyond literary studies and to include aspects of cultural studies in the broadest sense. The focus is, of course, on the island of Ireland (the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland) as well as the Irish diaspora in all aspects of society, history, culture, literature, the arts, and the media. The "European" dimension suggested by the series title gives expression to a preferred, but by no means exclusive concentration on (mainland) European perspectives on Irish Studies. It is hoped that such "etic" approaches in their detachment from native and local issues contribute a special dimension to the progress of Irish Studies at large and document the variety of European traditions of Irish Studies as inter- and multidisciplinary fields of research and teaching. Thus, the programme of this series is a reflection of the objectives of The European Federation of Associations and Centres of Irish Studies (EFACIS), under whose aegis the series is published. Contents: John Synge in Context; or, Re-Positioning Synge: The Point of Balance (A. Saddlemyer) - 'The Death of an Author': Collaborative Voices in J.M. Synge's Deirdre of the Sorrows (1910) (L. Pereira) - The Contemporary First-Person Novel in Ireland: Renewal of an Old Tradition? (E. D'hoker) - 'Frightened with my own hatred': Telling Violence in Jennifer Johnston's Fool's Sanctuary and The Invisible Worm (T. Casal) - 'Northern and troubled, southern and peaceful': Absence, Punishment, and the Disappeared in Films on the North of Ireland (Y. Igoe) - Ulster-Scots History and Culture: A North Channel Perspective (J. Erskine) - Representation and Responsibility: Women in Northern Ireland/the North of Ireland: A Conversation in Descant (M. Hill, E. Rooney) - To Act or Not to Act: Parliamentary Representations of Irish Poverty in the 1830s (A.-C. Lobo) - De Valera Remembering: A Study in Memory and Self-Representation (M. Böss) - The Irish in Post-War Britain: Towards Greater Visibility? (G. O'Keeffe-Vigneron) - Deconstructing Media Reports of Sexual Abuse: An Analysis of Framing in Irish Print Media Coverage of Sexual Abuse, 1993-2002 (M.J. Breen) - Public Representations of a Private Choice: Irish Daily Newspapers and the Referenda on Abortion of 1992 and 2002 (J. Mercereau) - Faith and Responsibility in Contemporary Ireland (C. Maignant) Too Smart to Be Sentimental: Contemporary Irish American Women Writers edited by Kathleen McInerney and Sally Barr Ebest (Notre Dame). CONTRIBUTORS: Caledonia Kearns, Sally Barr Ebest, Patricia Keefe Durso, John M. Menaghan, Kathleen McInerney, Beatrice Jacobson, Mary Ann Ryan, Susana Araujo, Patricia Gott, Kathleen Ann Kremins, Susana Hoeness-Krupsaw, and Amy Lee. SALLY BARR EBEST is professor of English at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. She is the author and co-editor of a number of books, including Reconciling Catholicism and Feminism? Personal Reflections on Tradition and Change ( University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), and Writing From A to Z. KATHLEEN McINERNEY is associate professor of education at Chicago State University. Comments on book jacket: “These personal, thoughtful, and authoritative essays make an original contribution. They are of significance for scholars in several related disciplines: contemporary American fiction, Irish American literature, sociology, ethnic studies, Irish studies, and women’s studies.” —Thomas A. Kuhlman, Creighton University Reviews Here's the link to the book on ND press's website: http://www3.undpress.nd.edu/exec/dispatch.php?s=title,P01199 Postcolonial Text - Special Issue on Ireland The online journal Postcolonial Text has published a special issue on Ireland. The guest editor is Eoin Flannery. Featured articles include: Modeling the Origins and Evolution of Postcolonial Politics: The Case of Ireland by Timothy Jerome White Hibernian Evanescence: Globalisation, Identity and the Virtual Shamrock by Paul Frederick O'Brien Suspect Grounds: Temporal and Spatial Paradoxes in Bram Stoker’s Dracula: a Postcolonial Reading by Robert A Smart, Michael Hutcheson Reimagining Women’s History in the Fiction of Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, Anne Enright, and Kate O’Riordan by Caitriona Moloney “You’re only putting it on”- dressing up, identity and subversion in Northern Irish drama. by Tom Maguire Postcolonialism in the poetry of Mary Dorcey by Rose Atfield Log on to http://postcolonial.org/ Graham Dawson, Making Peace with the Past? Memory, Trauma and the Irish Troubles, Morales Ladrón, Marisol, ed. Postcolonial and Gender Perspectives in Irish Studies. This book represents an attempt to tackle questions related to fragmented and often conflicting ideologies within Irish studies. Although a collective outcome, with contributions in English and Spanish, its unifying concern has been the appliance of postcolonial and gender perspectives to the analysis of Irish literature (prose, drama and verse) and cinema, as well as to the aesthetic production of both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Along the volume, while some authors have chosen to delve into the broad theoretical debate concerning the position of Irish studies within postcolonial and feminist theories, others offer detailed examinations of specific literary pieces and authors that fit in this panorama. All in all, the chapters are wide and diverse enough to trace a spatial and temporal map of the evolution of these paradigms within contemporary Irish studies, North and South of the border. Contents/Contenido PART I: Postcolonialism, Language and Gender PART II: Poetry PART III: Fiction: Novel and Short Stories PART IV: Drama PART V: Cinema The Poetry of Eavan Boland: A Postcolonial Reading Pilar Villar-Argáiz Description: Table of Contents: Michael Parker Northern Irish Literature, 1956-2006 (2 Volume Pack) The two volumes which make up Northern Irish Literature 1956-2006: The Imprint of History identify the contexts for literary production over the past fifty years, and address the troubled intersections where literature, history and politics meet. Chapters focus on a particular phase of the 'Troubles', offering detailed readings of both canonical and less-known texts by writers from different traditions and generations. Unlike existing studies, which are generally confined to a single author or genre, these volumes explore the diversity of Northern Irish literature and demonstrate how writers and texts continue to engage in enriching, insightful dialogue. The first volume begins with the economic decline of the mid-1950s and identifies this, along with Britain's policy of decolonisation and the growth of ecumenism, as a major factor in the subsequent conflict. The crisis within unionism coincided with a period of reconfiguration within the nationalist community. The book examines how these growing tensions were depicted in drama, fiction and poetry, and the different strategies deployed by writers in attempting to represent the accelerating political collapse, polarisation and violence. It celebrates their exemplary attempts at creating a literature able to confront and counter the viciousness and injustice abroad in the province, and change perceptual angles. The second volume examines the political and cultural reconfigurations which frame the literary texts between 1975 and 2006, such as the hunger strikes of 1980-81, the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, the growing dialogue between the SDLP and Sinn Fein, and increasing collaboration between British and Irish governments. It explores the quickenings in literature that accompanied the peace process, and alongside its discussion of the responses of high profile figures like Seamus Heaney, Medbh McGuckian, Michael Longley and Paul Muldoon to the changing political narrative, it attends to the work of less well-known authors like Deirdre Madden, Ruth Carr and Frank Ormsby, and to the emergence of a new generation of writers, such as Gary Mitchell and Sinead Morrissey. It demonstrates in particular how as the voices and perspectives of women have gained sustained attention since the 1980s, issues of gender have come increasingly to the fore in Northern Irish writing Reviews 'Michael Parker's impressive study bears the stamp of authority. He possesses the commanding overview and the jeweller's eye for detail essential for a properly historical reading of the literature of Northern Ireland. Preoccupied not with moments or movements, but with how the marks of history punctuate the present, Parker charts the imprint of history across five decades. The readings he offers, neither footprints in the sand nor steps set in stone, signify an ongoing struggle - historical, literary and critical - with deep roots... This is an expert traversal of troubled terrain...astonishingly erudite, painstakingly researched, and beautifully executed.' - Professor Willy Maley, School of English and Scottish Language and Literature, University of Glasgow, UK '...offers both a cultural history and a series of impeccably detailed readings of poetry, fiction and drama...By bringing this wide range of texts into constellation with each other, Parker significantly alters the map of Northern Irish literature as many people currently know it.' - Professor Stephen Regan, Department of English Studies, University of Durham, UK The Cambridge Introduction to Postcolonial Literatures in English This introduction explores a wide range of Anglophone post-colonial writing from Africa, Australia, the Caribbean, India, Ireland and Britain. Lyn Innes compares the ways in which authors shape communal identities and interrogate the values and representations of peoples in newly independent nations. Placing its emphasis on literary rather than theoretical texts, this book offers detailed discussion of many internationally renowned authors, including James Joyce, Chinua Achebe, Salman Rushdie, Les Murray and Derek Walcott. It also includes historical surveys of the main countries discussed, a glossary, and biographical notes on major authors. Irish authors discussed at some length include Friel, Synge, Yeats, Joyce, Heaney, and Boland. Preface; 1. Introduction: Situating the postcolonial; 2. Postcolonial issues in performance; 3. Alternative histories and writing back; 4. Authorising the self: postcolonial autobiographical writing; 5. Situating the self: landscape and place; 6. Appropriating the word: language and voice; 7. ‘Narrating the nation’: form and genre; 8. Rewriting her story: nation and gender; 9. Rewriting the nation: acknowledging economic and cultural diversity; 10. Transnational and black British writing: colonising in reverse; 11. Citizens of the world: reading postcolonial literature; Glossary of critical terms; Notes on main writers discussed; Brief histories: Australia, The Caribbean, East Africa, India and Pakistan, Ireland, West Africa; Bibliography. Party Pieces: Oral Storytelling and Social Performance in Joyce and Beckett
Forms of rhetorical indirection that appear in the context of folklore, such as signifying practices, masking, sly civility, and the grotesque or bizarre, come out of the mouths and actions of these writers' magical and magisterial characters. Old traditions can offer new ways of discussing issues such as sexual expression, religious beliefs, or issues of reproduction. As differences between times and cultures affect what "can" and "cannot" be said, folkloric indirection may open up a vista to discourses of which we as readers may not even be aware. Finally, the folk women of Morrison, Ní Dhuibhne, Hurston, and Lavin open up new points of entry to the discussion of fiction, rhetoric, censorship, and folklore. Lady Morgan’s Italy: Anglo–Irish Sensibilities and Italian Realities in Post Restoration Italy An Irish actor’s daughter, Sydney Owenson by dint of great charm and intelligence (as well as literary talent) not only became the wife of Sir Charles Morgan but a popular novelist and social critic in Regency and Early Victorian England. With Byron and Shelley, who admired her work, she shared a great love and interest in Italy. Her guide to Italy ( ITALY, 1821) was a landmark of political empathy and understanding for a post Napoleonic Italy in the throes of repression., persecution and obscurantist rule and for the first attempts at shaking off that rule.. Her guide was wildly successful and used by generations of Anglophone visitors. Professor Badin discusses the importance of Morgan’s fiction and belletrism in developing empathy and interest in Italy’s sufferings and woes. She investigates Morgan’s Low Church Evangelistic pieties and her dislike of Papal power, privilege and practice. Comparisons both direct and indirect with Ireland and the Irish are discussed at length as are Morgan’s acute class sensibilities and prejudices as well as her Irish patriotism. Morgan’s role in the emergence of Italian Romanticism and her textual strategies in creating polyphonic texts (codes, illusions, refutations) are described at length. Yeats and Theosophy by Ken Monteith When H. P. Blavatsky, the controversial head of the turn of the century movement Theosophy, defined a true Theosophist in her book The Key to Theosophy, she could have just as easily have been describing W. B. Yeats. Blavatsky writes, "A true Theosophist must put in practice the loftiest moral ideal, must strive to realize his unity with the whole of humanity, and work ceaselessly for others". Although Yeats joined Blavatsky's group in 1887, and subsequently left to help form The Golden Dawn in 1890, Yeats's careers as poet and politician were very much in line with the methods set forth by Blavatsky's doctrine. This project explores how Yeats employs this pop-culture occultism in the creation of his own national literary aesthetic. The project not only examines the influence theosophy has on the literary work Yeats produced in the late 1880s and 1890s, but also Yeats's work as literary critic and anthology editor during that time.
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,
While the poetry, fiction and memoirs of the First World War have found a comprehensive critical reception, the drama of the period has been largely neglected. This new study aims to redress the balance, surveying over 200 British and Irish plays which deal, in highly diverse ways, with the experience of the War. These plays range from West End successes to the productions of small amateur companies, and provide a unique insight into the watershed period between the certainties of the Victorian age and the disillusionment of the post-War era. Our Shared Japan. An Anthology of Contemporary Irish Poetry To mark the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Ireland and Japan in 1957, Our Shared Japan brings together a large selection of poems by Irish writers (both in English and in Irish) written or published during those 50 years. Featuring some of the best-known names in contemporary Irish poetry, it also includes many younger poets who have grown up with and, in various ways, responded to those growing connections. Some of the poets have visited or spent time in Japan and write from that experience; others respond to a Japan of the imagination, adopting or adapting Japanese poetic technique as a means to expand and enrich their own ways of looking at the world. In this respect, Our Shared Japan is a celebration of outside influence, but it is also a celebration of the power of poetry, wherever we may travel to find it, to bring us to ourselves. Our Shared Japan is published with the sponsorship of the Cultural Division of the Department of Foreign Affairs, and with the support of Poetry Ireland. “Cognoscenti apart, lots of people will be amazed to discover how many – and how much – Irish poets have written about Japan. How extensive the body of work is can now be gauged from a handsome new anthology [...] Our Shared Japan features work by more than 80 poets including Ciaran Carson, Katie Donovan, the late Séan Dunne (the book's title comes from his poem 'The Frail Sprig'), Paul Durcan, Pearse Hutchinson, Michael Longley, Aidan Carl Mathews, the late Dorothy Molloy, Paul Muldoon, Catríona O'Reilly and Peter Sirr. [...] Also included, and giving the anthology great context, is an abridged version of an essay by Seamus Heaney that was his 2000 Lafcadio Hearn lecture, sponsored by the Japan-Ireland Society, in which he talks of how the names of Bashō, Issa and Buson have found their way into the discourse to the extent that we in Ireland have learnt to recognise something Japanese in the earliest lyrics of the native tradition.” ̶ Caroline Walsh, The Irish Times About the editors: Joseph Woods was born in Drogheda in 1966. He lived in Kyoto from 1991 to 1993 and was first published in Japan. His collections are Sailing to Hokkaido (2001) and Bearings (2005), both from Worple Press, UK. He received the Patrick Kavanagh Award in 2000 and is currently Director of Poetry Ireland. Hilary Lennon (ed.), Frank O'Connor: Critical essays ( Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007) Best known as a master of the short story, Frank O’Connor was also a translator, playwright, novelist, poet, biographer, literary critic and essayist, and was one of the seminal figures in post-independence Irish cultural debate. Impressively wide-ranging in coverage, the contributors to this collection consider key social and political issues of the time, within the context of this writer’s work. Featuring essays by some of the leading scholars in the field of Irish Studies, this work is an authoritative introduction to the writer and re-examines Frank O’Connor’s place in Irish literature. CONTENTS ‘Light dying’ BRENDAN KENNELLY The editor, Hilary Lennon, currently teaches in the School of English, Trinity College, Dublin, and is also completing a PhD on the life and works of O’Connor in the post-independence decades. Spenser's Irish Work - Poetry, Plantation and Colonial Reformation Exploring Edmund Spenser's writings within the historical and aesthetic context of colonial agricultural reform in Ireland, his adopted home, this study demonstrates how Irish events and influences operate in far more of Spenser's work than previously suspected. Thomas Herron explores Spenser's relation to contemporary English poets and polemicists in Munster, such as Sir Walter Raleigh, Ralph Birkenshaw and Parr Lane, as well as heretofore neglected Irish material in Elizabethan pageantry in the 1590s, such as the famously elaborate state performances at Elvetham and Rycote. New light is shed here on the Irish significance of both the earlier and later Books of The Fairie Queene. Herron examines in depth Spenser's adaptation of the paradigm of the laboring artist for empire found in Virgil's Georgics, which Herron weaves explicitly with Spenser's experience as an administrator, property owner and planter in Ireland. Taking in history, religion, geography, classics and colonial studies, as well as early modern literature and Irish studies, this book constitutes a valuable addition to Spenser scholarship. Contents Part 1 Finding Spenser's Ireland: Spenser and the anxious critics; Spenser's plantation life; Planting Reformation in Ireland: Walshe, Smith, Robinson and Bryskett; Spenser's heroic legacy in Munster verse: Ralph Birkenshaw and Parr Lane. Part 2 Creating The Faerie Queene: Rethinking Book I from Within a Georgic-Irish Paradigm: Elemental violence and the Virgilian ladder; Flourishing monarchs: Virgil's Georgics, Gavin Douglas, and the Proem to The Faerie Queene; Plain thinking and civic celebration in Book I. Part 3 Local Adversity and Apocalyptic triumph: Books V, VI and VII of The Faerie Queene: Imperial coda: Elizabethan progress and 'The Mutabilitie Cantos'; 'Pagan hound': Cúchulainn, the Souldan and the Spanish Armada in Book V; Taming Raleigh's beast: monastic dissolution and local politics in Book VI; Bibliography; Index. La poésie de William Butler Yeats Jacqueline Genet’s new book on the poetry of WB Yeats is published by Septentrion press. For further information and ordering details, please log on to their website: http://www.septentrion.com/livre_aff.asp?id=1072
Kiely's biography is based on vast research sources, not least a twenty-three year friendship with Francis Stuart (1902-2000) author of 'Black List, Section H' and 24 other novels. Stuart's life remains controversial because of his broadcasts for Hitler's Third Reich which blacklisted him after the Second World War. His marriage to Iseult Gonne, former lover of Ezra Pound and daugher of W.B. Yeats's beloved Maud Gonne, entangled Stuart in the Yeats-Gonne circle which he ultimately rejected along with the Irish Academy of Letters and the writers of the Celtic Twilight. In a life that spanned the 20th century, Stuart challenged the work of Irish writers including Joyce while evolving his unique vision in exile, prison and isolation which relegated him to the position of underground artist who endured and emerged. Yeats conceeded to admit, 'he will become our great writer'. Controversies surrounded Stuart's latter years: with the Abbey Theatre over his play 'Who Fears To Speak', within Aosdana over his election to the honour of Saoi, and he took a libel action which proved successful against the 'Irish Times' on being accused of being anti-Semitic by Kevin Myers in the 1990s Jonathan Bloom, The Art of Revision in the Short Stories of V. S. Pritchett and William Trevor This pioneering critical study of Pritchett and Trevor is intended for scholar and general reader alike. It is the first to draw on extensive, unpublished archival holdings, including manuscripts, notebooks, and correspondence. Tracing the growth of their short stories from initial idea through publication, it reveals how they create the “unsaid” element that gives the reader an interpretive role; explores their transformation of actual incidents and people into fiction, including those in their own lives; and discusses their important relationships with editors, especially those at the New Yorker. Finally, in-depth comparisons of published stories show their contrasting approaches to shared themes, their apparent mutual influence, and the central role of fantasy in their work. Praise for Art of Revision in the Short Stories of V. S. Pritchett and William Trevor: “Dr. Bloom has done a great service for our understanding not only of V. S.. Pritchett and William Trevor, but of the way short stories work, and the ways in which their authors polish, recast and revise them. He understands to perfection the subtle means by which the best short stories blend the art of narrative with the art of poetry, each, as it were, drawing just the right attention to the other. His own concluding chapter--'English Fantasy and Irish Entrapment,' is itself a masterpiece of afterthought and sympathetic analysis.” --John Bayley, Oxford University “Here is a serious, scrupulous and fascinating piece of scholarship that examines the working methods of two modern masters of the short story, V. S. Pritchett and William Trevor, using their drafts, revisions and correspondence with editors to take you to the heart of the imaginative process.” --Claire Tomalin, Whitbread Prize winner for Biography “Jonathan Bloom has written a valuable appreciation of two of the world’s very finest short story writers, an insightful close reading focusing purely and respectfully on the stories themselves.” --Jhumpa Lahiri, Pulitzer Prize winner for Fiction “By invoking a range of complementary approaches--critical, textual, and occasionally biographical--and combining general assessments with detailed examinations of particular works, Jonathan Bloom succeeds not only in celebrating the work of Pritchett and Trevor themselves but also in reinforcing the status of the short story as a major literary genre.” --Michael Millgate, University of Toronto Table of contents Introduction * Fanfare for the Common Man * Revision as Transformation: The Making and Remaking of V.S. Pritchett’s "You Make Your Own Life" * William Trevor's "Distillation of an Essence": From "Meeting Mrs. Faraday" to "Cocktails at Doney's" * V.S. Pritchett’s Ministering Angell * Real Incursions in Fictive Worlds * Living on the Other Side of the Frontier * The Roads Taken Make All The Difference: Comic Spirit and Tragic Comedian * English Fantasy and Irish Entrapment Jonathan Bloom holds degrees from Princeton University and the University of Paris, and a D.Phil. from St. John’s College, Oxford. He has taught at the universities of Paris and Oxford and his work has appeared in such publications as the Sewanee Review and the Journal of the Short Story in English. He has been a Harry Ransom Center Fellow and is currently working on an edition of the letters and diaries of V. S. Pritchett. He lives in Paris. Nation States: The Cultures of Irish Nationalism by Michael Mays "Michael Mays' book is a distinguished and original contribution to the current critical confluence of Irish cultural, social, political, and literary history. Mays has unified these elements through a lucid and continuous scholarly narrative marked by a non-pedantic use of primary sources and a fine use of critical theory subordinate to his primary style of presentation. Especially useful is Mays' questioning and judicious use of "postcolonial" theory and his discussions of modern Irish literature; his crisp and interesting insights regarding Yeats are worth the price of admission. It is the only scholarly work in its genre which I find appropriate for both advanced scholarship and the pleasure of the informed general reader. I unreservedly recommend this excellent book." —Tom Hofheinz, "Joyce and the Invention of Irish History: Finnegans Wake in Context," Drawing on diverse cultural forms, and ranging across disciplinary boundaries, Nation States maps the contested cultural terrain of Irish nationalism from the Act of Union of 1800 to the present. In looking at Irish nationalism as a site of struggle, Mays examines both the myriad ways in which the nation fashions itself as the a priori ground of identity, and those processes through which nationalism engenders an ostensibly unique national identity corresponding to one and only one nation-state, the place where we always have been, and can only ever be, "at home." Michael Mays is associate professor and Chair of English at the University of Southern Mississippi. Modern Irish Autobiography: Self, Nation and Society How have Irish autobiographers represented the changing relationship between the private self, the social world and the political narrative of the nation? How have they negotiated the forces of family, class, religion and sexuality? What are their preferred autobiographic modes? These are just some of the provocative questions explored in Modern Irish Autobiography: Self, Nation and Society , the first comprehensive analysis of the Irish autobiographical tradition from the nineteenth century to the present day. Featuring essays by distinguished scholars from Ireland, Britain and North America, this pioneering collection presents original, theoretically-informed readings of a wide range of texts, from John Mitchel's Jail Journal (1854) to John McGahern's Memoir (2005). The book contains historically contextualised chapters on topics such as women's autobiography, Gaelic life writing, Irish autobiographical fiction and Northern Irish political memoirs. Authors discussed include Augusta Gregory, James Joyce, Elizabeth Bowen, Sean O'Casey, Kate O'Brien, John McGahern and George O'Brien. Contents:
Reviews: LIAM HARTE is a Lecturer in Irish and Modern Literature at the University of Manchester, UK. His books include Contemporary Irish Fiction: Themes, Tropes, Theories (2000, co-edited with Michael Parker) and Ireland Beyond Boundaries: Mapping Irish Studies in the Twenty-First Century (2006, co-edited with Yvonne Whelan) Reading Joyce by David Pierce ‘Is there one who understands me?’ So wrote James Joyce towards the end of his final work, Finnegans Wake. The question continues to be asked about the author who claimed that he had put so many enigmas into Ulysses that it would ‘keep the professors busy for centuries’ arguing over what he meant. Studied by thousands of students and with a huge popular following, Joyce is arguably the greatest writer of the twentieth century, but, for many, his books remain an impenetrable mystery. With the help of an engaging commentary, a guide to Joyce’s writing, and a bank of material gleaned from thirty years teaching Joyce in the classroom, David Pierce has produced a book that makes sense of Joyce’s work for today’s reader. He succeeds in presenting Joyce as an author both more straightforward and infinitely more complex than we had perhaps imagined.
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IASIL member Dr. Richard Rankin Russell, who teaches at Baylor University in Texas, has edited a collection of essays on the London Irish playwright Martin McDonagh, which was published by Routledge in its Casebooks on Modern Dramatists series on November 15, 2007. The ISBN number is 978-0-415-97765-4. This book represents the first collection of original critical material on Martin McDonagh, one of the most celebrated young playwrights of the last decade. Credited with reinvigorating contemporary Irish drama, his dark, despairing comedies have been performed extensively both on Broadway and in the West End, culminating in an Olivier Award for the The Pillowman and an Academy Award for his short film Six Shooter. In Martin McDonagh, Richard Rankin Russell brings together a variety of theoretical perspectives – from globalization to the gothic – to survey McDonagh’s plays in unprecedented critical depth. Specially commissioned essays cover topics such as identity politics, the shadow of violence and the role of Catholicism in the work of this most precocious of contemporary dramatists. 
'Francis Stuart: Artist and OutcasPage Updated
10 April, 2008
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