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A study of how James Joyce, Darrell Figgis, Flann O'Brien, and other modern Irish writers incorporated Celtic myth and folklore in their novels.
Visions of the Irish Dream assembles essays that examine the elusive dream of the Irish and Irish Americans, looking at aspirations of 19th-century emigrants to Canada and the United States, political and educational goals of the Irish, historic trauma, contemporary xenophobia, and artists’ renditions of “Irishness.” Whether the dreams are fulfilled or deferred, they all strive to come to terms with what it means to be Irish; sometimes the definition involves bringing a piece of the old country with you, buying facsimiles of “genuine Irish goods,” or redefining self in a way that frees Ireland of the colonial model. This study explores the conflicted and shifting visions of the peo...
Crafting Infinity is a multi-disciplinary collection of essays that investigates how aspects of traditional Irish culture have been revised, retooled, and repackaged in the interest of maintaining the integrity of Irish myth tales, artistic values, spiritual foundations, and historic icons. From perspectives on early Irish Christianity to national mythology, traditional Irish music, Irish history represented in film, literary inventiveness, and evidence of the Irish diaspora, this study examines how artists, writers, theorists, and emigrants from Ireland re-interpreted, and reshaped Irish traditions, often invoking Ireland’s relationship with other nations before it acquired independence. ...
Beginning with a critical reappraisal of the notion of "fairy tale" and extending it to include categories and genres which are in common usage in folklore and in literary studies, this book throws light on the general processes involved in storytelling. It illuminates the fundamental ways in which a culture is formed, while highlighting important features of the Irish narrative tradition, in all its wealth and variety and in its connections with the mythical and historical events of Ireland. The Irish Fairy Tale argues that the fairy tale is a kind of "neutral zone," a place of transition as well as a meeting place for popular beliefs and individual creativity, oral tradition and literary w...
Arguing for a reconsideration of William Butler Yeats’s work in the light of contemporary studies of world literature, Barry Sheils shows how reading Yeats enables a fuller understanding of the relationship between the extensive map of world literary production and the intensities of poetic practice. Yeats’s appropriation of Japanese Noh theatre, his promotion of translations of Rabindranath Tagore and Shri Purohit Swãmi, and his repeated ventures into American culture signalled his commitment to moving beyond Europe for his literary reference points. Sheils suggests that a reexamination of the transnational character of Yeats's work provides an opportunity to reflect critically on the ...
"On March 6, 1998, a disgruntled employee went on a rampage at the Connecticut Lottery Corporation, killing four executives before turning the gun on himself. The tragedy made headlines and topped newscasts across the country for weeks. In The Unspeakable, Denise Brown, who lost her husband in the shootings, gives voice to the deeper part of the story left untold by the tabloids." "The Unspeakable is based on the author's journal entries of the year following her husband's death - a record of debilitating nightmares and fears, of fruitless encounters with cooperation and state officials, of the struggle to help her children cope with the loss of a devoted father. It charts a path from bitterness to hope, and reveals the difficult steps that a survivor must take to move beyond rage and rise above the profound and complicated grief that is the legacy of violence."--BOOK JACKET.
This study pairs selected Irish and British women novelists of three periods, relating their voices to the women's movements in their respective nations. In the first wave, nationalist and militant ideologies competed with the suffrage fight in Ireland. Elizabeth Bowen's The Last September illustrates the melancholy of gender performance and confusion of ethnic identity in the dying Anglo-Irish Ascendancy class. In England, suffrage ideologies clashed with socialism and patriotism. Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway contains a political unconscious that links its characters across class and gender. In the second wave, heterosexual romantic relationships come under scrutiny. Edna O'Brien's Countr...
This collection charts the vital contextual backgrounds to James Joyce's life and writing. The essays collectively show how Joyce was rooted in his times, how he is both a product and a critic of his multiple contexts, and how important he remains to the world of literature, criticism and culture.
This volume gathers over 40 world-class scholars to explore the dynamics that have shaped the Irish experience in America from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries. From the early 1600s to the present, over 10 million Irish people emigrated to various points around the globe. Of them, more than six million settled in what we now call the United States of America. Some were emigrants, some were exiles, and some were refugees—but they all brought with them habits, ideas, and beliefs from Ireland, which played a role in shaping their new home. Organized chronologically, the chapters in this volume offer a cogent blend of historical perspectives from the pens of some of the world’s ...