The interest of Anglo-Irish literature is not only that its canon includes a high proportion of literary giants - Yeats, Joyce, Beckett - but also that it exemplifies the problematics of literature in a context of social and cultural tension. Irish literary history has often been studied under precisely that aspect: as the literature of a country in a marginal, colonial yet intra-European position; a country where a variety of cultural traditions (Gaelic, Anglo-Irish, Ulster Presbyterian) have coexisted in an uneasy relationship; a country with intense social and economic divisions. These...

Recent developments within and beyond Europe have variously challenged the very idea of Europe, calling it into question and demanding reconsideration of its underlying assumptions. The essays collected here reassess the contemporary position of a perceived “European” identity in the world, overshadowed as it is by the long antecedents and current crisis of triumphalist Eurocentrism. While Eurocentrism itself is still a potent mind-set, it is now increasingly challenged by intra-European crises and by the emergence of autonomously non-European perceptions of Europe. The perspectives...