This is a collection of original essays by international scholars which focuses on Irish writing in English from the eighteenth century to the present. The essays explore the recurrent motif of exile and the subversive potential of Irish writing in political, cultural and literary terms. Case-studies of major writers such as Swift, Joyce, and Heaney are set alongside discussions of relatively unexplored writing such as radical pamphleteering in the age of the French Revolution and the contribution of women writers to Nationalistic journalism.

This is a collection of original essays by international scholars which focuses on Irish writing in English from the eighteenth century to the present. The essays explore the recurrent motif of exile and the subversive potential of Irish writing in political, cultural and literary terms. Case-studies of major writers such as Swift, Joyce, and Heaney are set alongside discussions of relatively unexplored writing such as radical pamphleteering in the age of the French Revolution and the contribution of women writers to Nationalistic journalism.

This volume reflects one of the new areas of English Studies as it broadens to take in non-western literatures, and places more emphasis on the contexts and broader notions of `writing'. In discussing writing from and about Africa, this collection touches on studies in black writing, colonialism and imperialism and cultural development in the third world. It begins by providing a historical introduction to the main regional traditions, and then builds on this to discuss major issues, such as oral tradition, the significance of `literature' as a western import, representations of Africa in...