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 11 March, 2008 January 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
November - December 2007 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 October 2007 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 Reading Games: An Aesthetics of Play in Flann O'Brien, Samuel Beckett, and Georges Perec By Kimberly Bohman-Kalaja Recovering Memory: Irish Representations of Past and Present Editors: Hedda Friberg, Irene Gilsenan Nordin and Lene Yding Pedersen May - August 2007 Kao, Wei H. The Formation of an Irish Literary Canon in the Mid-Twentieth Century John Waddell Foundation myths: the beginnings of Irish archaeology Laura O'Connor, Haunted English: The Celtic Fringe, The British Empire, and De-Anglicization Dear Far-voiced Veteran: Essays in Honour of Tom Munnelly, Edited by Anne Clune. The Book in Ireland, edited by Jacqueline Genet, Sylvie Mikowski, Fabienne Garcier. The Irish Reader: Essays for John Devitt Heidi Hansson, Emily Lawless 1845-1913: Writing the Interspace Fiona Brennan, "George Fitzmaurice 'Wild in His Own Way': Biography of an Abbey Playwright" Irony and Identity in Modern Irish Drama by Ondrej Pilny Melissa Sihra (ed) Women in Irish Drama - A Century of Authorship and Representation Chris Arthur Essay Collections Eóin Flannery, Versions Of Ireland: Empire, Modernity And Resistance In Irish Culture Eóin Flannery & Angus Mitchell, Enemies of Empire Heather Clark, The Ulster Renaissance - Poetry in Belfast 1962-1972 Heather Ingman: Twentieth-Century Fiction by Irish Women - Nation and Gender, Ashgate, 2007 January - May 2007 Brian Ó Conchubhair, Gearrscéalta Ár Linne Mary O'Donnell: The Place of Miracles; New & Selected Poems Ireland Beyond Boundaries: Mapping Irish Studies in the Twenty-first century Irene Gilsenan Nordin (ed.) The Body and Desire in Contemporary Irish Poetry John Wilson Foster, The Cambridge Companion to the Irish Novel Anthony Roche, ed, The Cambridge Companion to Brian Friel Making Theatre in Northern Ireland Through and Beyond the Troubles, Tom Maguire Mac Mathúna, S. and Fomin, M., eds., 2006. Parallels between Celtic and Slavic Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies Klaus Peter Jochum (ed.) The Reception of W. B. Yeats in Europe. London & New York IASIL Proceedings: Back to Present, Forward to the Past - 2 Vols These pages are provided for information only - you should confirm prices, release dates, and contents with publishers. |
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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. Reading Games: An Aesthetics of Play in Flann O'Brien, Samuel Beckett, and Georges Perec By Kimberly Bohman-Kalaja Reading Games guides readers through the intricacies of a neglected literary genre, the Play-Text. Appealing to readers of literature and game enthusiasts alike, Bohman - Kalaja's book provides insightful analysis of the rules of reading, the nature and function of rules, cheating, violence, designated play-spaces, and the potential ethical implications of the dialogue that develops between authors and readers as a result of literary play. Drawing from a variety of game and play theories, Reading Games presents a new perspective on the world of experimental fiction - discovering, step by step, the innovative strategies of those authors who play reading games. Reviews "We all know that there's more to games than fun. Bohman-Kalaja's remarkable study of O'Brien, Beckett and Perec is the first to get to grips with the deeper issues involved in the ludic practices of these post-modern masters. It also teaches us a great deal about what kind of games can be played with and through words. Learned, illuminating, original and profound, this is a study that should transform the teaching of modern literature — and bring back some of the fun!" --David Bellos "Reading Games is a subtle, provocative, intellectually invigorating study of the ludic impulse in literature. Thoughtful, carefully researched, and mobile in its strategy, this book argues for a reconfigured vision of literature, one based on an ethics of writerly and readerly gesture. In close engagement with the work of Flann O'Brien, Samuel Beckett, and Georges Perec, Kimberly Bohman-Kalaja shows how their writing exemplifies the will to experiment, to make things new. The kind of play that Reading Games describes is both free and uncorrupted; it is refreshingly dialogical, clearing away a site for interaction and articulation within the text; most importantly perhaps, it encourages us to 'see otherly.'" --Warren Motte Kimberly Bohman-Kalaja received a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Princeton University. She currently lives in New York City and teaches at New York University. Recovering Memory: Irish Representations of Past and Present Various ways of collecting, storing and recovering memories have been the focus of the most recent joint research project carried out by a group of Irish Studies scholars, all based in the Nordic countries and members of the Nordic Irish Studies Network (NISN). The result of the project, Recovering Memory: Irish Representations of Past and Present, is a collection of essays which examines the theme of memory in Irish literature and culture against the theoretical background of the philosophical discourse of modernity. Offering a wide range of perspectives, this volume examines a plurality of representations—past and present—of memory, both public and private, and the intersection between collective memory and individual in modern Ireland. Also explored is the relation between memory and identity—national and private—as well as questions of subjectivity and the construction of the self. Given Ireland’s tragic past and its long history of colonisation, it is inevitable that various aspects of memory in terms of nationality, post-colonialism, and politics also have bearing on this study. The volume is divided into five sections, each of which examines one broadly defined aspect of memory. The introductory section focuses on memory and history, and is followed by sections on memory and autobiography, place, identity, and memory in the work of novelist John Banville. Within each section, the individual writers engage in a fruitful dialogue with each other and with the approaches of such theorists as Arendt, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur, and Baudrillard. Hedda Friberg is Senior Lecturer in English at Mid Sweden University, Härnösand, Sweden. Among her recent publications are “‘In the Murky Sea of Memory’: Memory’s Miscues in John Banville’s The Sea” in An Sionnach 1.2. (2005) and an article on Banville’s Eclipse and Shroud in the Irish University Review special issue on Banville (June 2006). A monograph tentatively entitled “The Fleetingly Real in John Banville’s Recent Work” is in the making. Irene Gilsenan Nordin is Senior Lecturer in English at Dalarna University College, Sweden. She is director of DUCIS, Dalarna University Centre for Irish Studies, and editor of NIS (Nordic Irish Studies). Her most recent books are Re-Mapping Exile ( Aarhus University Press, 2005) and The Body and Desire in Contemporary Irish Poetry (Irish Academic Press, 2006) and she is currently completing a monograph entitled The Element of the Spiritual in the Poetry of Eiléan Ni Chuilleanáin for Mellen Press. Lene Yding Pedersen is a Senior Lecturer in English at Aalborg University, Denmark. Her research focuses on contemporary literature and culture of the English-speaking world, and her publications include articles on cultural text studies, narrative theory, and Irish literature. Among her recent publications are “Atlanticized: Joseph O’Connor’s America” in Cultural Text Studies 2: Transatlantic (Aalborg University Press, 2006) and “Colliding Words: Banville’s Art Trilogy” in Literature and Visual Culture ( University of Iceland Press, 2005) Seamus Heaney and the Emblems of Hope Karen Marguerite Moloney A rich body of mythology and literature has grown around the Celtic ritual known as the Feis of Tara or “marriage of sovereignty”—ancient ceremonies in which the future king pledges to care for the land and serve the goddess of sovereignty. Seamus Heaney, whose writing has attracted the overwhelming share of critical attention directed toward contemporary Irish poetry, has engaged this symbolic tradition in some of his most significant—and controversial—work. Seamus Heaney and the Emblems of Hope explores Heaney’s use of the family of sovereignty motifs and redresses the imbalance of criticism that has overemphasized the theme of sacrifice to the detriment of more optimistic symbols. Moreover, the author reviews the development of the marriage motif in Irish poetry from the ninth to the twenty-first centuries with a focus on Heaney’s adaptations from The Frenzy of Sweeney and The Midnight Court and on the work of such poets as Kinsella, Montague, Boland, and Ní Dhomhnaill. Karen Marguerite Moloney examines the central role that Heaney assigns the Feis of Tara in his response to the crisis of Ulster and to the general spiritual bankruptcy of our times, showing in his verse how the relationship of the male lover to the goddess— particularly in her more repugnant guises—serves as prototype for the humility and deference needed to repair the effects of English colonization of Ireland and, by extension, centuries of worldwide patriarchal abuse. Through close, sustained readings of poems previously overlooked or misinterpreted, such as “Ocean’s Love to Ireland,” “Come to the Bower,” and “Bone Dreams”—poems that Irish feminist critics have deemed flawed and distressingly sexist— Moloney refutes views that have long stood unchallenged. She also considers the direction of Heaney’s more recent poems, which continue to resonate to the twin demands of conscience and artistic integrity. An impeccably researched and immensely readable work, Seamus Heaney and the Emblems of Hope reveals that Heaney’s poetry offers a reverence for archetypal femininity and Dionysian energy that can counter the sterility and violence of postcolonial Irish life. Moloney shows us that, in the tradition of poets who preceded him, Heaney turns to the marriage of sovereignty to encode a message for our times—and to offer up emblems of hope on behalf of us all. Karen Marguerite Moloney is a poet and Professor of English at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. Her poetry has won such awards as the Fred Weld Herman Memorial Prize from the Academy of American Poets. She lives in Salt Lake City. 212 pages, 13 illustrations, List price $39.95 John Waddell Foundation myths: the beginnings of Irish archaeology Foundation myths is an account of the beginnings and development of the study of Irish archaeology from medieval times to the twentieth century. Topics covered include medieval antiquarianism, the impact of the Enlightenment, eighteenth-century antiquarian activity, the emergence of a professional branch of learning in museum and university, and the growth of the subject in the 1930s and following decades. Political and religious divisions inevitably shaped different perceptions of the past, but the enduring influence of early Irish literature is evident, and ancient origin myths in particular had a noteworthy role to play. Archaeological interpretation was coloured well into the twentieth century by a persistent belief in a series of mythical invaders, in a heroic pre-Christian era peopled by fearless Celtic warriors, and in a golden age of early Christian saints and scholars. Kao, Wei H. The Formation of an Irish Literary Canon in the Mid-Twentieth Century This scholarly study of the formation of the Irish literary canon in the first half of the twentieth century provides fascinating and often surprising insights into the ways in which different educational institutions responded to the political and historical changes taking place as Ireland moved from colonial to postcolonial status. Dr Wei H. Kao discusses not only what was included on school and university curriculum but also writers who were excluded, in particular women writers who appeared to interrogate a male nationalist agenda for the representation of Ireland. -Emeritus Professor C.L. Innes The writers discussed include Daniel Corkery, J.G. Farrell, Denis Johnston, Mary Lavin, Iris Murdoch, Kate O’Brien, Frank O’Connor, Liam O’Flaherty, and James Plunkett. Wei H. Kao received his doctorate from the University of Kent, England, and teaches at National Taiwan University. His articles on Irish dramatists and women novelists have appeared, among others, in Moving World: A Journal of Transcultural Writings, Journal of Beckett Studies, and Celtic Tiger, Paper Tiger: Irish Writing from Wilde to Weird (2007). His comparative study of Irish and world literatures is forthcoming. Laura O'Connor, Haunted English: The Celtic Fringe, The British Empire, and De-Anglicization Eavan Boland’s Evolution As an Irish Woman Poet: An Outsider within an Outsider’s Culture Carmen Szabo, "Clearing the Ground": The Field Day Theatre Company and the Construction of Irish Identities Dear Far-voiced Veteran: Essays in Honour of Tom Munnelly, Edited by Anne Clune. Tom Munnelly is widely recognized as one of the world’s foremost collectors of traditional Irish songs in the English language. In this volume28 of his colleagues and friends, all of them outstanding in their own fields, have come together to produce a volume of essays in Tom’s honour. This volume both does homage to Tom’s personal achievement and shows the vibrancy and importance of ongoing work in the fields of traditional singing; folksong; folklore; ethnomusicology; song and folklore collecting; and traditional Irish music and dance. Contents: Copies available by post from The Old Kilfarboy Society, Kildimo, Miltown Malbay, Co. Clare (065 7084698) or online at www.oac.ie. Copies also available to personal callers at the Irish Traditional Music Archive, 73 Merrion Square, Dublin 2. The Book in Ireland, edited by Jacqueline Genet, Sylvie Mikowski, Fabienne Garcier. The Irish Reader: Essays for John Devitt Heidi Hansson, Emily Lawless 1845-1913: Writing the Interspace Emily Lawless is one of the most important of Ireland's forgotten women writers. From a Protestant ascendancy background, she combined nationalist feelings with unionist sympathies. This important new study argues that her own term, 'interspace', can be used to explain her vision of Ireland and her position as an Anglo-Irish woman writer determined to resist categorisation or stock solutions at a time of polarisation and cultural transition. This is the first comprehensive study of the writing of Emily Lawless (1845-1913) and includes biographical information, letters and contemporary reception as well as analyses based on present-day theoretical approaches, especially feminist criticism and cultural geography. The study begins with a presentation of Lawless's family background, her social circle and a description of her literary career, including how her works have been received up until the present. Her early fiction, novels and stories set outside Ireland are then explored and successive chapters deal with her landscape writing and her novels about the west of Ireland, her negotiations with the voice of authority in historical and biographical writing, her historical fiction and her three collections of poetry. The concluding chapter argues that the contradictory aspects of her writing are an effect of her desire to avoid categorisation. Heidi Hansson is an Associate Professor of English Literature, Umeå University, Sweden, and is author of Romance Revived: Postmodern Romances and the Tradition ( Uppsala, 1998). MONOLOGUES (Theatre, Performance, Subjectivity) Monologue is to be found across the spectrum of modern and postmodern theatre and drama, from Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter to Karen Finley and Spalding Gray. The theatre of monologue revolves around the ambiguities of narrative as a means of knowing and communicating, and is conditioned by dubious authenticity. This collection will bring together original essays on monologue by theatre scholars and practitioners that address the complexities of the form as it appears in contemporary drama and performance. Contributors to this volume include Mark Berninger, Johannes Birringer, Mateusz Borowski, David Bradby, Rebecca D'Monte, Laurens De Vos, Dee Heddon, Jorge Huerta, Daniela Jobertova, Eamonn Jordon, Ashley Lucas, Catherine McLean-Hopkins, Mark Schreiber, Brian Singleton, Malgorzata Sugiera, Eckart Voigts-Virchow ... Clare Wallace is a lecturer at Charles University and at the University of New York, Prague. She has published on Joyce, Marina Carr, Patrick McCabe and contemporary Irish and British drama. She is the managing editor of HJS (Hypermedia Joyce Studies) and an advisory editor of Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge. "In his best work, the dramatic energy, multi-coloured language, and soaring imagination of George Fitzmaurice makes J.M. Synge look as if he was nailed to the ground. Fiona Brennan has done an immense service to Irish theatre by gifting us this thorough and sympathetic biography of the great Kerry magician.Her introduction to his considerable output, and exhumation of long-buried autobiographical details, allow us a much greater appreciation and understanding of Fitzmaurice, the one remaining under-celebrated genius of twentieth century Irish Drama." Conall Morrison, Associate Artist, Abbey Theatre. Contents Irony and Identity in Modern Irish Drama by Ondrej Pilny
Ondrej Pilny is Director of the Centre for Irish Studies at Charles University, Prague. He is editor of Global Ireland: Irish Literatures in the New Millennium (with Clare Wallace), Time Refigured: Myths, Foundation Texts and Imagined Communities (with Martin Prochazka), and an annotated volume of J.M. Synges works in Czech translation. His translations include Flann OBriens The Third Policeman, and plays by Brian Friel, Martin McDonagh and J.M. Synge. Women in Irish Drama - A Century of Authorship and Representation This volume of essays explores the fascinating and immensely rich legacy of Irish women playwrights throughout the twentieth century and opens up essential dialogue on the politics of authorship, representation and the 'canon' of Irish theatre. 'Women in Irish Drama' opens a space for previously forgotten or silenced voices and marks an exciting new beginning for the way in which Irish theatre is considered in the twenty-first century. The book features essays from leading practitioners and academics, including Marina Carr, Olwen Fouere, and many others. Contents
Eóin Flannery, Versions Of Ireland: Empire, Modernity And Resistance In Irish Culture Versions of Ireland brings a refined postcolonial theoretical optic to bear on many of the most urgent questions within contemporary Irish cultural studies. Drawing on, and extending, the most advanced critical work within the discipline, the book offers a subtle critical genealogy of the development of Ireland's diverse postcolonial projects. Furthermore, it reflects on the relevance and the effectiveness of postcolonial and subaltern historiographical methodologies in an Irish context, interrogating the ethical and political problematics of such discursive importation. Flannery's work highlights the operative dynamics of imperial modernity, together with its representational agents, in Ireland, and also divines moments of explicit and implicit resistance to modernity's rationalising and accumulative urges. Eóin Flannery teaches in the Department of Languages and Cultural Studies at the University of Limerick in Ireland. He is the author of several articles on Irish poetry, contemporary Irish fiction, postcolonial studies and visual culture. He has three other books forthcoming, including: Fanon's One Big Idea: Ireland and Postcolonial Studies; Ireland in Focus: Film, Photography and Popular Culture and Enemies of Empire: New Perspectives on Imperialism, Literature and History.
Enemies of empire addresses a conspicuous gap in the current literature on colonial and postcolonial literary, theoretical and historical studies and introduces new perspectives on the qualitative nature of empire. Themes examined include Irish literature, African history, Cold War politics, circuits of knowledge, religious history, Indian hunger-strikes, early 20th-century humanitarianism, globalization and subaltern studies. Contributors: Linda Connolly (UCC), Michael Griffin (U. Limerick), Eugene O'Brien (Mary I.), Louise Fuller (NUIM), Joseph Lennon (Manhattan College, New York), Michael Kilburn (Endicott College, Beverly, MA), Talinn Grigor (MIT), Dan O'Connell (Hobart & William Smith Colleges), Stephen Donovan (Columbia U.), Tiro Sebina (U. Botswana), Eóin Flannery (U. Limerick), Angus Mitchell (U. Limerick). The Ulster Renaissance - Poetry in Belfast 1962-1972 This is the first full-length study of the extraordinary period of intense poetic activity in Belfast known as the Ulster Renaissance - a time when young Northern Irish poets such as Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon, Michael Longley, James Simmons, and Paul Muldoon began crafting their art, and tuning their voices through each other. Drawing extensively upon new archival material, as well as personal interviews and correspondence, The Ulster Renaissance argues that these poets' friendships and rivalries were crucial to their autonomous artistic development. The book also sheds new light on the idea of a collaborative Belfast coterie - often treated derisively by critics - and shows that the poets frequently engaged in efforts to promote a cohesive 'Northern' literary community, distinct from that which existed in London and Dublin. It suggests that it was this cohesion - at turns inclusive and confining - which ultimately challenged the Belfast poets to find their individual voices. Twentieth-Century Fiction by Irish Women - Nation and Gender During much of the twentieth century, Irish women's position was on the boundaries of national life. Using Julia Kristeva's theories of nationhood, often particularly relevant to Ireland, this study demonstrates that their marginaliz |
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