Ireland and the Irish are beloved today in the United States, not the least because of the large Irish-American population. The Irish have contributed a great deal to the Western literary canon and to the arts, and their way of life on the Emerald Isle is fabled. "Culture and Customs of Ireland" is "the" source for those interested in learning about the real Ireland and how its culture and customs came to be. Scanlan has her finger on the pulse of the country as it booms into the twenty-first century. This insightful survey of the contemporary scene is a one-stop resource for country study...

Is literature dangerous? In the romantic view, writers were rebels--Shelley's -unacknowledged legislators of mankind---poised to change the world. In relation to twentieth-century literature, however, such a view becomes suspect. By looking at a range of novels about terrorism, Plotting Terror raises the possibility that the writer's relationship to actual politics may be considerably reduced in the age of television and the Internet.

Margaret Scanlan traces the figure of the writer as rival or double of the terrorist from its origins in the romantic conviction of the writer's...

Is literature dangerous? In the romantic view, writers were rebels--Shelley's -unacknowledged legislators of mankind---poised to change the world. In relation to twentieth-century literature, however, such a view becomes suspect. By looking at a range of novels about terrorism, Plotting Terror raises the possibility that the writer's relationship to actual politics may be considerably reduced in the age of television and the Internet.

Margaret Scanlan traces the figure of the writer as rival or double of the terrorist from its origins in the romantic conviction of the writer's...

Is the historical novel the outmoded genre that some people imagine--form inseparable from romanticism, nationalism, and the nineteenth century? In this stimulating volume, Margaret Scanlan answers a convincing "no," as she demonstrates the relevance of historical novels by well-known figures such as Anthony Burgess, John le Carr, Graham Greene, Doris Lessing, Iris Murdoch, and Paul Scott, as well as by less well established writers such as Joseph Hone and Thomas Kilroy. Scanlan shows what a skeptical, experimental approach to the relationship between history and fiction these writers...