The Crossings of Art in Ireland

Edited by Ruben Moi, Brynhildur Boyce and Charles I. Armstrong

Oxford: Peter Lang

311 pp. | ISBN 978-3-0343-0983-7 | £42.00

The essays in this volume explore interartistic connections in Irish literature, drama, film and the visual arts. Within modern and postmodern culture, innovation is often driven by surprising interrelations between the arts, and this book offers a discussion of this phenomenon and analyses a number of artworks that move across disciplines. Several contributors examine the concept of ekphrasis, looking at how Irish writers such as Seamus Heaney, John Banville, Paul Muldoon, Ciaran Carson, Patrick Kavanagh, W.B. Yeats and Samuel Beckett have responded to the visual arts. Others explore interartistic ‘crossings’ in the drama of Brian Friel, in James Barry’s eighteenth-century Shakespeare paintings and in contemporary Irish film. Together, the essays present a fresh perspective on Irish artistic culture and open up new avenues for future study.

Contents: Róisín Keys: Brian Friel’s Performances: Meaning in an Intermedial Play – Anne Karhio: Between Text, Video and Performance: Landscape in Pamela Brown’s ‘Ireland Unfree’ – Bent Sørensen: ‘True Gods of Sound and Stone’ – The Many Crossings of Patrick Kavanagh’s On Raglan Road – Seán Crosson: ‘All this must come to an end. Through talking’: Dialogue and Troubles Cinema – Fionna Barber: Visual Tectonics: Post-millenial Art in Ireland – Stuart Sillars: James Barry’s Shakespeare Paintings – Charles I. Armstrong: Proud and Wayward: W. B. Yeats, Aesthetic Engagement and the Hugh Lane Pictures – Britta Olinder: John Hewitt and the Sister Arts – Erik Tonning: The Christ Disbelieved by Beckett: Christian Iconography in Samuel Beckett’s Work – Joakim Wrethed: ‘A Momentous Nothing’: The Phenomenology of Life, Ekphrasis and Temporality in John Banville’s The Sea – Eugene O’Brien: ‘A Shabby Old Couple’: Seamus Heaney’s Ekphrastic Imperative – Ruben Moi: Verse, Visuality and Vision: The Challenges of Ekphrasis in Ciaran Carson’s Poetry – Anthony W. Johnson: The Adoration of the Maggot: A Muldonic Coronation.

Available from http://www.peterlang.com?430983