By turns sacred or profane, mystical or earthy, scathingly satirical and modern or achingly nostalgic for the ever-receding past, the literature of Ireland has long entranced and entertained readers the world over. Now The Oxford Companion to Irish Literature provides a comprehensive and delightfully readable guide to the evolution and achievements of Irish writers and writing across sixteen tumultuous centuries, from fourth-century ogam writing etched on ancient stones, to the towering twentieth-century figures of Yeats, Joyce, and Beckett, to the bold new voices emerging today as Ireland...

In Changing States, Robert Welch examines the work of the major authors of modern Irish literature in the context of the transformation from Gaelic to 20th-century post-industrial culture. The force of Irish writing, uniting authors as various as Yeats, Heaney, Synge, Beckett, Joyce and Mairtin O' Cadhain, largely derives, Welch argues, from their need to respond to the challenges of this transformation. Writing against a sense of loss, their work is distinguished by certain key features: an intense awareness of the power of language; a provisionality in regard to character; a preoccupation...