Literature in English, Ireland

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  Tongue of Water, Teeth of Stones: Northern Irish Poetry and Social Violence

  In a 1984 lecture on poetry and political violence, Seamus Heaney remarked that "the idea of poetry was itself that higher ideal to which the poets had unconsciously turned in order to survive the demeaning conditions." Jonathan Hufstader examines the work of Heaney and his contemporaries to discover how poems, combining conscious technique with unconscious impulse, work as aesthetic forms and as strategies for emotional survival.

  In his powerful study, Hufstader shows how a number of contemporary Northern Irish poets-- including Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon, Michael Longley, Paul Muldoon, Tom Paulin, Ciarán Carson and Medbh McGuckian--explore the resources of language ...Read More

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  Passage to the Center: Imagination and the Sacred in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney

  Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, author of nine collections of poetry and three volumes of influential essays, is regarded by many as the greatest Irish poet since Yeats. Passage to the Center is the most comprehensive critical treatment to date on Heaney's poetry and the first to study Heaney's entire body of work (including his recent volumes, Seeing Things and The Spirit Level ). It is also the first to examine the poems from the perspective of religion, one of Heaney's guiding preoccupations. According to Tobin, the growth of Heaney's poetry may be charted through the recurrent figure of ""the center,"" ...Read More

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  ReJoycing: New Readings of Dubliners

  "In this volume, the contributors—a veritable Who’s Who of Joyce specialists—provide an excellent introduction to the central issues of contemporary Joyce criticism."

  What is really winning about this essay collection is that without any prompting or editorial proselytizing, receptive readers will come away from ReJoycing , not only with a number of new insights into various stories but with an enlarged critical repertoire. -- James Joyce Literary Supplement

  Draws on the best of two important trends in Joyce criticism: the traditional commitment to probing Joyce’s complex language and the more recent effort to track down political and ideological meanings in ...Read More

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  The Irish Play on the New York Stage, 1874-1966

  Over the years American—especially New York—audiences have evolved a consistent set of expectations for the “Irish play." Traditionally the term implied a specific subject matter, invariably rural and Catholic, and embodied a reductive notion of Irish drama and society. This view continues to influence the types of Irish drama produced in the United States today. By examining seven different opening nights in New York theaters over the course of the last century, John Harrington considers the reception of Irish drama on the American stage and explores the complex interplay between drama and audience expectations. All of these productions provoked some ...Read More

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  James Joyce and the Burden of Disease

  James Joyce’s near blindness, his peculiar gait, and his death from perforated ulcers are commonplace knowledge to most of his readers. But until now, most Joyce scholars have not recognized that these symptoms point to a diagnosis of syphilis. Kathleen Ferris traces Joyce’s medical history as described in his correspondence, in the diaries of his brother Stanislaus, and in the memoirs of his acquaintances, to show that many of his symptoms match those of tabes dorsalis, a form of neurosyphilis which, untreated, eventually leads to paralysis. Combining literary analysis and medical detection, Ferris builds a convincing case that this dread ...Read More

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  Irish Women Writers: An Uncharted Tradition

  From the legendary poet Oisin to modernist masters like James Joyce, William Butler Yeats, and Samuel Beckett, Ireland’s literary tradition has made its mark on the Western canon. Despite its proud tradition, the student who searches the shelves for works on Irish women’s fiction is liable to feel much as Virginia Woolf did when she searched the British Museum for work on women by women. Critic Nuala O’Faolain, when confronted with this disparity, suggested that “modern Irish literature is dominated by men so brilliant in their misanthropy . . . [that] the self-respect of Irish women is radically and paradoxically ...Read More