Virginia Woolf provides a centrepiece for this book, and this chapter shows how the trajectory of... more Virginia Woolf provides a centrepiece for this book, and this chapter shows how the trajectory of her fictional oeuvre dovetails suggestively with the course of Irish history from the Home Rule crisis to the Civil War and into the formative years of Ireland’s independent statehood. In this temporal alignment, Woolf’s Irish references form a cryptic pattern of textual punctuation and interruption, her narrative allusions to Ireland providing a sideline commentary on her main theme: the post-war decline of English liberalism and the interwar rise of domestic patriarchy and international fascism. The chapter tracks Woolf’s Irish allusions from the early novel The Voyage Out to her late work The Years—a faux-historical family saga strung chronologically between the fall of Parnell and the ascendancy of de Valera, while also assessing the impact of her relationship with the Irish writer Elizabeth Bowen.
Review in 1886, W. B. Yeats wrote that '[T]he most critical of Irish readers are only anxious to ... more Review in 1886, W. B. Yeats wrote that '[T]he most critical of Irish readers are only anxious to be academic, and to be servile to English notions. If Sir Samuel Ferguson had written of Arthur and Guinevere, they would have received him gladly; that he chose rather to tell of Congal and of desolate and queenly Deirdre, we give him full-hearted thanks; he has restored to our hills and rivers their epic interest'. 1 This articlewhich appeared shortly after its subject's deathis often cited for its accusations of anti-Gaelic prejudice in literary matters, and almost as often for its charge against the then Professor of English Literature and Oratory at Trinity College, Dublin, Edward Dowden, whose irresponsibility towards his friend, Yeats claimed, had left Ferguson exposed to the taunts of English reviewers. Undoubtedly, Yeats had a point: the Professor was no friend to Gaelic revivalism. In the same month as the Dublin University Review piece appeared, Dowden's forthright views on the subject were quoted at some length by the speaker to the Trinity College Philosophical Society, in the Inaugural Address of its thirty-third session: 'Surely an Irish man of letters may be engaged in genuinely patriotic work if he strive to bring the best ideas from France, from Spain, from England, from America, although the word "Ireland" may not for ever be thrilling on his lips. We should be far truer patriots if, instead of singing paeans about Irish genius, we were to set ourselves to correct some of the defects of the Irish intellect'. 2 The nature of Dowden's divergence from the interests of Ferguson's cultural nationalist school has been well rehearsed elsewhere. But Yeats's specific terminology, framed by his assertion in the article of a modern-day division between the creative and the critical classes, raises contingent issues about the relationship between the two men. What, exactly, did he mean by 'the most critical' of Irish readers, and in what
National Collection of Children's Books: Repositioning Children s Literature in Ireland
This research impact case study highlights the multiple impacts stemming from the National Collec... more This research impact case study highlights the multiple impacts stemming from the National Collection of Children's Books Project in a concise public facing format. The document summarises how this transdisciplinary digital humanities endeavour has engaged with libraries across Dublin to make available open access information on over 250,000 children’s books in more than 90 languages from five Dublin libraries, and the impact it has had in positioning Ireland as a leader in teaching and research on children’s literature and fostered engaged research, teaching and learning. It is aimed at multiple audiences, its language is clear, engaging and non-jargonistic.
Ireland, Revolution and the English Modernist Imagination
Ireland, Revolution, and the English Modernist Imagination
This introductory chapter argues that English writers of the modernist era frequently allude in t... more This introductory chapter argues that English writers of the modernist era frequently allude in their work to the events of Ireland’s revolutionary era, from the 1912 Home Rule crisis to the Easter Rising and the Civil War, and that such references often configure Irish events as a means of expressing English political apprehension, cultural disorientation, and vicarious nationalism. The chapter illustrates the English–Irish literary connection through attention to various writers who feature in the study, including Wyndham Lewis, Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, and Ethel Mannin, with preliminary readings that show how Irish allusions in English texts repeatedly inflect domestic concerns or interests, from the legacies of liberal crises and resurgent forms of interwar English nationalism to post-war imperial disaffection. The chapter also sets this discussion in a theoretical context inflected by Fredric Jameson and shaped by relevant theorists of late modernism.
Ireland, Revolution, and the English Modernist Imagination
This chapter revises critical readings of the Irish big house tradition and addresses, within the... more This chapter revises critical readings of the Irish big house tradition and addresses, within the context of late modernism, the related category of ‘small house’ affectations. It asks how this spatial shift of emphasis helped to sustain Ireland as an imagined—and indeed, literal—retreat for a jaded wartime English sensibility, and how this reconfiguration lends itself to a political reading of neutral Ireland’s function as a figurative antechamber for England’s late imperial desire for ‘small nationhood’. The chapter assesses various representations of Ireland as the site of a time-locked minimalism, a theme encouraged by English film and travel writing, and by several novelists, including the two studied closely in this chapter, Evelyn Waugh, whose inclinations to an Irish escape indicate a protest at the left-wing statist turn in the English political landscape, and Graham Greene, whose 1940s retreat to Achill Island (including contact with retired Irish revolutionary Ernie O’Mal...
Special Issue: New Perspectives on the Irish Literary Revival || Literature, Partition and the Nation-State: Culture and Conflict in Ireland, Israel and Palestineby Joe Cleary
As a vital field of scholarship, book history has now reached a stage of maturity where its early... more As a vital field of scholarship, book history has now reached a stage of maturity where its early work can be reassessed and built upon. That is the goal of New Directions in Book History. This series will publish monographs in English that employ advanced methods and open up new frontiers in research, written by younger, mid-career, and senior scholars. Its scope is global, extending to the Western and non-Western worlds and to all historical periods from antiquity to the 21st century, including studies of script, print, and post-print cultures. New Directions in Book History, then, will be broadly inclusive but always in the vanguard. It will experiment with inventive methodologies, explore unexplored archives, debate overlooked issues, challenge prevailing theories, study neglected subjects, and demonstrate the relevance of book history to other academic fields. Every title in this series will address the evolution of the historiography of the book, and every one will point to new directions in book scholarship. New Directions in Book History will be published in three formats: single-author monographs; edited collections of essays in single or multiple volumes; and shorter works produced through Palgrave's e-book (EPUB2) 'Pivot' stream. Book proposals should emphasize the innovative aspects of the work, and should be sent to either of the two series editors:
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