Joyce was a realist, but his reality was not ours, writes John Gordon in his new book. Here, he maintains that the shifting styles and techniques of Joyce's works is a function of two interacting realities - the external reality of a particular time and place and the internal reality of a character's mental state. In making this case Gordon offers up a number of new readings: how Stephen Dedalus conceives and composes his villanelle; why the Dubliners story about Little Chandler is titled A Little Cloud; why MacDowell suddenly appears and disappears; what is happening when Leopold Bloom looks...

John Redmond was one of the most influential leaders of Irish nationalism. A classic tragic hero, Redmond displayed more integrity than his fellow contemporary Irish leaders. He was a sophisticated intellectual with an open mind but was plagued by a fatal flaw - his unreasonable optimism. Redmond's trust in British politicians, especially his Liberal allies, led him and Ireland to the events that probably had the most impact on Irish history since the Great Famine of the 1840s - his active support for Great Britain in the first World War. It severely damaged Anglo-Irish relations for three...

In this compelling work, Rebecca Pelan analyzes religion, region, class, and national and ethnic identity as crucial contexts in shaping feminist consciousness in the two Irelands, and compares the divergence of feminist perspectives to be found North and South of the border. The very different histories of the North and South are reflected in their literature. While women in the Republic of Ireland have tended to write about social issues--"sexism, crime, unemployment, and domestic violence--"women in Northern Ireland focused on their society's historical tension and primarily nationalist...

The overarching purpose of this volume is to show how a discrete tradition of writing about Lough Derg helped contemporary Irish poets rescue, metaphysical inquiry from the grip of nationalism. Linked with the supernatural from pagan times, Lough Derg had by the early twentieth century become an icon of the fusion of the Catholic Church and the Irish nation. Surveying literary treatments of Lough Derg from William Carleton through Denis Devlin, Patrick Kavanagh, and ultimately Seamus Heaney, Peggy O'Brien addresses the role of spirituality in an increasingly cosmopolitan, postmodern,...

"Women, Press, and Politics" explores the literary and historical significance of women's writing for the most influential body of nationalist journalism during the Irish Revival, the advanced nationalist press. This work studies women's writings in the Irish nationalist tradition, focusing in particular on leading female voices in the cultural and political movements that helped launch the Easter Rising of 1916: Augusta Gregory, Alice Milligan, Maud Gonne, Constance Markievicz, Delia Larkin, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, and Louise Bennett. Karen Steele argues that by examining the innovative...

What does it mean to be of Irish descent? What does Irish descent stand for in Ireland? In Northern Ireland? In the United States? How are the categories of "native" and "settler" and accounts of ethnic origin being refigured through popular genealogy and population genetics?"Of Irish Descent" addresses these questions by exploring the contemporary significance of ideas of ancestral roots, origins, and connections. Moving from the intimacy of family stories and reunions to disputed state policies on noble titles and new scientific accounts and applications of genetic research, Nash traces the...

Considers the ways in which the Irish canon not only represents an ongoing awareness of trauma as a literary and cultural force, but also how this representation has shifted since the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first century.

This volume is a comprehensive study of the ascendancy novel from Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent (1800) through contemporary reinventions of the form. Kreilkamp argues that Irish fiction needs to be rescued from the critical assumptions underlying attacks on the historical mythologies of Yeats and the Literary Revival.

An accomplished novelist, short story writer, and playwright, Richard Power (1928-1970) was most well-known for his 1969 novel The Hungry Grass. Gathered together for the first time, Power's subtle and poignant stories capture the daily lives of urban and rural dwellers in Ireland at the turn of the twentieth century.

Considers the ways in which the Irish canon not only represents an ongoing awareness of trauma as a literary and cultural force, but also how this representation has shifted since the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first century.