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In The Values of Literary Studies: Critical Institutions, Scholarly Agendas, leading scholars illuminate the purpose and priorities of literary criticism.
T.S. Eliot maintained a healthy critical culture is vital to the survival of civilization and it is this thesis that Dr McDonald argues forcefully- referring as much to the literary and cultural climate of the USA as to that of the UK. The point of litera
This is an eloquent and accessible introduction to one of the most important writers of the twentieth century. This book provides biographical and contextual information, but more fundamentally, it also considers how we might think about an enduringly difficult and experimental novelist and playwright who often challenges the very concepts of meaning and interpretation. It deals with his life, intellectual and cultural background, plays, prose, and critical response and relates Beckett's work and vision to the culture and context from which he wrote. McDonald provides a sustained analysis of the major plays, including Waiting for Godot, Endgame, and Happy Days and his major prose works including Murphy, Watt and his famous 'trilogy' of novels (Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable). This introduction concludes by mapping the huge terrain of criticism Beckett's work has prompted, and it explains the turn in recent years to understanding Beckett within his historical context.
In Tragedy and Irish Literature, McDonald considers the culture of suffering, loss, and guilt in the work of J.M. Synge, Sean O'Casey and Samuel Beckett. He applies external ideas of tragedy to the three dramatists and also discerns particular sorts of tragedy within their own work. While alert to the real differences between the three writers, the book also traces common themes and preoccupations. It identifies a conflict between form and content, between heightened language and debased reality as the hallmark of Irish tragedy.
This book attests to the unique development of modernism in Ireland - driven by political as well as artistic concerns.
In Tragedy and Irish Writing McDonald considers the culture of suffering, loss, and guilt in the work of Synge, O'Casey, and Beckett. He applies external ideas of tragedy to the three dramatists and also discerns particular sorts of tragedy within their own work. While alert to the real differences among the three, the book also traces common themes and preoccupations. It identifies a conflict between form and content, between heightened language and debased reality, as the hallmark of Irish tragedy.
THE IRISH TOP 10 BESTSELLER A gripping investigation into one of Irish history's greatest mysteries, Great Hatred reveals the true story behind one of the most significant political assassinations to ever have been committed on British soil. 'Heart-stopping . . . The book is both forensic and a page-turner, and ultimately deeply tragic, for Ireland as much as for the murder victim.' MICHAEL PORTILLO 'Gripping from start to finish. McGreevy turns a forensic mind to a political assassination that changed the course of history, uncovering a trove of unseen evidence in the process.' ANITA ANAND, author of The Patient Assassin 'Invaluable.' IRISH TIMES 'Intellgient and insightful.' IRISH INDEPEND...
First edition published in 1988 : Law and literature : a misunderstood relation ; revised and enlarged edition published in 1998.
Flann O'Brien & Modernism brings a much-needed refreshment to the state of scholarship on this increasingly recognised but still widely misunderstood 'second generation' modernist. Rather than construe him as a postmodernist, it correctly locates O'Brien's work as the product of a late modernist sensibility and cultural context. Similarly, while there should be no doubt of his Irishness, and his profound debts to Irish language, history and culture, this collection seeks to understand O'Brien's nationally sensitive achievement as the work of an internationalist whose preoccupations reflect global modernist trends. The distinct themes and concerns tracked in Flann O'Brien & Modernism include characterization in branching narrative forms; the ethics and paradoxes of naming; parody and homage; lies and deception; theatricality; sexuality; technology and transport; and the inevitable matter of drink and intoxication. Taken together, these specific topics construct a mosaic image of O'Brien as an exemplary modernist auteur, abreast of all the most salient philosophical and technical concerns affecting literary production in the period immediately before and after World War Two.
From climate catastrophe to pandemics and economic crises, the problems facing humanity are dizzyingly complex and increasingly planetary in scale. Critical Modesty in Contemporary Fiction argues for contemporary fiction's capacity to help those who may feel despair at the enormity of such problems--not, as one might think, through the ambitious search for grand solutions, but rather by inculcating a temperament of modesty. This new temperament of critical modesty locates the fight for freedom and human dignity within the limited and compromised conditions in which we find ourselves. Through readings of Ian McEwan, Zadie Smith, J. M. Coetzee, and David Mitchell, this volume shows how contemp...