Irish Literature

The essay presents a hypothesis of Flann O'Brien reading and parodying Joyce's Ulysses in At Swim-Two-Birds as filtered through Wyndham Lewis's critique of Joyce in Time and Western Man. It argues that some of the tropes of time, materialities and anachronistic cultural references in At Swim reflect a knowledgeable use of Lewis's hostile framing of Joyce, while also tacitly parodying Lewis's avant-garde aesthetic proposal as anachronistic in the 1930s Ireland. The novel's temporality and ironic use of cultural references may hint at a disenchanted stance toward high modernism's aesthetic and political proposals and sketch an assemblage of philistinism and aesthetic conformism as the ironic follow-up to Joyce's monumental project of the national epic.

The concept of Limbo, a marginal place where the unbaptised dead are sent to spend eternity in neither pleasure nor pain, has haunted Irish language literature. The consequent ban on burying stillborn children on consecrated ground meant that funerary rites, from wakes to headstones, were routinely withheld from them, while mothers were instructed not to pray for their dead children. Instead, the unbaptised were often buried in unmarked graves in designated marginal spaces called 'cillíní'.

After ​briefly arguing for the importance of traditional Gaelic burial rites, and especially the keen (oral elegy) as a female vernacular art, this paper will examine the ambivalent and sometimes subversive Gaelic literary response to this particular area of church teaching. Drawing on elegiac poems and short stories by Irish language writers Máirtín Ó Cadhain, Derry O'Sullivan, Dairena Ní Chinnéide and Biddy Jenkinson, I will argue that this edict against a rich tradition of funerary rites, Christian and other, constituted a 'bridge too far' for a generally religiously observant community. I will highlight how each text reflects, in its own way, an incomplete grief and an intense pressure on mourners to choose, like Antigone before them, between opposing moral duties to authority and their dead.

This study aims at highlighting the role of the Irish theatre in reviving Irish culture and establishing a dependent Irish identity. It also seeks to prove that theatre is used as means of resistance to English colonialism; it presents W. B. Yeats as an example of the Irish dramatists who played a significant role in the recreation of Irish national identity as an independent distinct identity. Actually, Yeats' efforts in the national employment of literature for national purposes were the fountainhead by which he was able to present the national cause of his country. The study concludes that the Irish theatre played a great national role by presenting nationalism-oriented plays that aroused the sense of national feelings of audiences and created a national identity as well. Irish theatre imposingly for grounded itself powerfully not on the literary level, but also on the national level by its role in identity creation.

pp. 45-75.

This chapter builds off of Nuala Finnegan’s recent work on Rulfo’s influential 1955 novella Pedro Páramo, and Máirtín Ó Cadhain’s 1949 Irish-language classic Cré na Cille.  Both texts deploy the fragmented and decomposing speech of the dead in order to vocalize the trauma perpetrated upon impoverished rural communities in the aftermath of the early-20th century revolutions that shook Mexico and Ireland alike (the 1910 Revolution and 1916 Easter Rising respectively).  This chapter also pushes back against the larger critical tendency to presume these communities to be de facto failed states.  Turning instead to critic Yvette Jiménez-Báez, this chapter examines how the dead voices in both texts reformulate and revive their decimated communities via the Carnivalesque.

Doris Edel: Inside the Táin – Exploring Cú Chulainn, Fergus, Ailill, and Medb

Softcover, 384 pp, 2 maps, 2 figures, 1 diagram – ISBN: 978-3-942002-20-2

This is the first literary-critical study of the Táin Bó Cúailnge in its entirety, and as an autonomous literary work. The key to a more deeply probing understanding of the semiliterate epic is the study of its characters: what they do and why they do it – why more important than what. Why reveals the differences between the various versions. Most promising is the multilayered Recension I, mainly preserved in Lebor na hUidre, which testifies of the keen interest of its compilers in the portrayal of the characters, while the version in the Book of Leinster, with its tendency to omit what might lessen the heroes’ prestige, pays for its greater unity with loss of depth.
The multifacetedness of the characters in the early version, combined with the deceptive simplicity of the plot, lends the work a remarkable pragmatism. Despite occasional baroque descriptions of battle frenzy, the main heroes Cú Chulainn and Fergus embody a heroism reined in by prudence. All through the war they do everything in their power to limit the use of force. Ailill and Medb represent a new type of ruler-entrepreneur, who seeks to realize his aim at the lowest possible cost and accepts failure matter-of-factly. So the epic has no fatal end-point. The greater part of the two armies are able return to their countries. The theme of mutual destruction is relegated to the Battle of the Bulls. The lasting antagonism between the North and the remainder of the island must have endowed the Táin with contemporary significance at various points in time, as the allusions to (near-)contemporary events suggest.

"James Joyce, as a postcolonial Irishman, understands the connection between Ireland and the Orient . In his texts, his characters often contemplate the Orient while numbly living out their routines in Ireland, but Joyce’s Irish Oriental aesthetic goes far beyond his characters’ small mindedness and paralysis. My intent in this paper is to discover how Joyce interacts with the commonly understood category of Irish Orientalism through his texts, characters, and styles of writing. I begin my argument by defining Irish Orientalism in the context of Orientalism and history. Next, I analyze select elements of “Araby” from Dubliners and “Lotus Eaters” from Ulysses, demonstrating how they either confirm or subvert traditional conceptions of Irish Orientalism. I conclude my essay with a contemplation of other critics’ views on Joyce’s Irish Oriental aesthetic and establish my own argument in light of my close readings of the texts “Araby” and “Lotus Eaters.” I propose that Joyce neither fully confirms nor subverts the concept of Irish Orientalism; ultimately, I argue that Joyce’s works promote a new vision of Irish Orientalism that is organic and transformative and that demonstrates bravely how a postcolonial entity like Ireland (or the Orient) can begin to recreate its own identity separate from imperialism."

The great Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe once wrote: “Art is man’s constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him.” One can see then why the Nigerian-Irish writer Melatu Uche Okorie, who spent over eight years in the direct provision system, turned to literature. Her slim but weighty short story collection This Hostel Life tells of that experience. First published in 2018 by Skein Press, Ireland’s new platform for minority writers, the book is now being republished by the prestigious Virago Press.

Many interpretations of James Joyce's "Clay" focus on speculative evaluation of the main character, Maria, a spinster who spends Halloween night with the family of her former nannying charge, Joe Donnelly. Such an analysis of the short story from Dubliners often relies on "significance" drawn from projected symbolism, despite the author intending readers to take the anthology at face value. On the other hand, these critical readings often deem the moment in which Maria blindly chooses a dish of clay insignificant, even though it inspires the story's title. Indeed, the folkloric allusions, and use of passive versus active voice in reference to Maria, indicate the decision holds a much greater magnitude than most recognize: "Clay" constructs this moment as a pivotal one in the climax of the narrative, and the future course of Maria's life. By picking the dish which represents death, Maria reinforces her persistent trait of passivity and resignation to life without genuine happiness or greater purpose. As a result, the futility of her action makes an "anti-choice" of Maria's only true example of agency, presenting one overt characterization not reliant upon outside assumptions of Joyce's intentions or influences. While the typical interpretations grapple to prove Maria "actually represents" the Virgin Mary (Azar &Yazdchi 1052), Mary Magdalene (Eide 58), or Mother Ireland (Owens #2, 604), the only direct characterization presented through the narrative language sets Maria as a passive spectator to the life around her. Margaret Norris argues "Joyce does not promote the old maid to metaphoric status as much as he explores her need, and her strategies, for promoting herself" (206). Although Maria professes contentment in her current position, the language of her free indirect discourse suggests otherwise: "In her characteristic voice and perspective, everything is

Публикация представляет собой комментированный перевод раннесредневекового ирландского текста, известного как «Синод Западного Мунстера». Речь идет об одном из важнейших источников по политическому устройству и королевской иерархии в раннесредневековой Ирландии. Текст сохранился в составе одного из самых ранних корпусов генеалогий Ирландии, представленном в манускрипте Laud Miscellany 610 в Бодлеанской библиотеке в Оксфорде, и датируется приблизительно началом IX в. В нем описывается заключение соглашения между королем (rí) Мунстера (Южная Ирландия) и правителями небольших туатов1 (rí tuatha), входивших в состав королевства Мунстер. Перевод сопровождается вступительной статьей и небольшим глоссарием раннесредневековых ирландских терминов.

The present publication includes a commented translation of an untitled early medieval Irish text, known as «West Munster Synod», together with an introduction and a short glossary of medieval Irish terms. The text is a major source on the political institutions and the kingship hierarchy in Early Medieval Munster (southern Ireland). It came down to us as a part of a corpus of early Irish genealogical tracts from MS. Laud Miscellany 610 in The Bodleian Library, Oxford, and dated approximately by the late early ninth century. It describes the agreement between the king (rí) of Munster and the kings of the subordinate tuatha of West Munster.

"‘This book illuminates the fascinating life of Eva Gore-Booth. Often lost in the shadow of her more famous sister, Constance, Eva finally emerges as a key figure. Historian Sonja Tiernan has written an exciting and vibrant life of this extraordinary woman, at once an intrepid feminist, pacifist and advocate for social justice.’
Professor Maria Luddy, University of Warwick

This is the first dedicated biography of the radical Irish writer and political activist, Eva Gore-Booth. A vast body of material from private collections and state archives has been used to uncover this remarkable life history.

Born into West of Ireland Anglo-Irish landed gentry, Gore-Booth dramatically rejected her aristocratic heritage, choosing to live and work amongst the poorest classes in industrial Manchester. Her pioneering work on behalf of barmaids, circus performers, flower sellers and pit-brow lasses is traced here with clarity and enthusiasm. The story of Gore-Booth's life is captivating and provides new insights into key political issues of early twentieth century Ireland and Britain. A prolific author who enjoyed a place within W.B. Yeats' literary circle, Gore-Booth also fostered a well-deserved reputation as a determined and successful political activist, at one stage defeating no less an adversary than Winston Churchill. This ground-breaking book reveals Gore-Booth’s experiences of militant pacifism during the Great War, her campaign to reprieve Roger Casement's death sentence, her instrumental role in the fight for sexual equality in the English workplace and her unwavering struggle for Irish independence. Her close bond with her sister, Countess Markievicz, an iconic and sometimes divisive Irish nationalist, offers the reader a new dimension into Markievicz's personal life.

Comprehensive and engaging, this book establishes Eva Gore-Booth as a significant player in Irish and British politics and as a major figure in literary, women’s and trade union history."

Can language and literature cure psychological trauma? If so, what forms do they (have to) take
in doing so? When does language hit the wall where the unspeakable mandates silence? And
where might literature come in as the rescuing hand by offering forms of expression which are
rooted in speech but transcend the merely spoken? This study confronts these issues through
the double lenses of Sebastian Barry’s oeuvre and the complex of dissociative disorders that
are at work both in his creative output and the ways in which he fictionalizes dark and traumatic
biographical data.
Re-negotiated in the process are the deconstructivist trauma paradigm that has come to
dominate trauma discourse in the humanities as well as the duality of Barry’s critical reception.
Barry is either being hailed as a rescuer of marginalized, ‘subaltern’ histories or admonished as
too radical a proponent of historical revisionism. A dissociative reading of literature’s
capabilities and limitations in addressing trauma and Barry’s literary mission to work-through
family trauma in his work moves the discourse beyond radical dualities towards a more
integrated understanding of posttraumatic literature.

Her current research into travel writing involves re-reading texts by Edith Wharton and Henry James as travel accounts. She has published two books, The Function of the Imagination in the Writings of Henry James (Mellen, 2006) and Literature in Context (Jate Press, 2010). Email: akovacs@lit.u-szeged.hu This paper discusses some secrets concerning Colm Tóibín and Henry James-some open secrets. The task at hand is to look into the Jamesian legacy in Brooklyn, by our mutual favourite, Colm Tóibín. Tóibín is an accomplished Jacobite both as an author (Tóibín 2004) and as a critic (Tóibín 2010), but he is also an internationally acclaimed Irish author with a serious interest in Irish issues. The essay focuses on the intersection of Jamesian features and the representation of Irishness in his Brooklyn. Brooklyn itself is a Jamesian story of a young girl moving to a new country and learning to play along new social rules, to understand di erently, a story of migration and transculturation in the 20 th century transatlantic context. One can even see it as Tóibín's version of James' transatlantic story of the innocent immigrant girl in The Portrait of a Lady. At the same time, Brooklyn is a speci cally Irish-American immigrant novel in which a young rural Irish girl goes to America for a job, gets married and, after some complications, settles. The complications involve the betrayal of her lovers and I would like to look into the use of Jamesian ambiguity in the complications of this immigrant story. The question is this: what role does Jamesian ambiguity have in the representation of the heroine's, Eilis's, immigrant experience? It appears that the use of Jamesian secrets and ambiguity in the novel enhances the uidity and socially preprogrammed nature of the immigrant experience Eilis undergoes. This position is going to be explained in three separate steps. Firstly, taking a look at the Irish-American background of the novel will clarify the speci cally moral implications of the plot. Secondly, by surveying its Jamesian themes, the Jamesian ambiguity of the story will be highlighted. Last but not least, scenes of Irish-American ambiguity will be considered which accentuate the moral implications in the novel. The way I see her, Eilis as a Jamesian character is neither a villain nor an heroine, but an immigrant who is helpless in a morally ambiguous situation. 1. IRISH-AMERICAN THEMES IN BROOKLYN Eilis Lacey, the young female protagonist of Brooklyn, leaves a dreary Ireland that o ers her no job and no boyfriend in the early 1950s. In the US she befriends a young Italian man, Tony, she rst goes to bed with and then gets married to before returning to Ireland for a visit. Back home she nds another suitor, who, oblivious to her prior ties, o ers to marry her. She is very much tempted to accept, when transatlantic Irish gossip reveals her marital status and she is obliged to ee back to the US before an impending scandal breaks out. She leaves behind her elderly widow of a mother, her disappointed suitor, and the possibility of a middle class life in Ireland-in exchange for a US working class existence. In sum, she starts out as a typical immigrant to the US: both her character and the story that evolves around her share features of previous Irish emigrant narratives. This brings the

Any scholarly project that purports to trace connections between two countries names a field that is to some degree already there-lying buried in archives, of course, but also contained in habitual ways of seeing and talking about texts. The present special issue is no exception. If it makes sense to search for points of contact between Irish and South African writing, this says as much about how these two literatures have been framed in Anglo-American scholarship as it does about any objective traits that they may share in common. As Pierre Bourdieu explains, all enunciations of specific scholarly positions inevitably track back to a wider set of "dispositions" cultivated by the "field" of literary studies-its normative understanding of what literature "is,"

This paper aims to manifest the ways in which Colm Tóibín deals with Irish nationalism and culture through the memories of his protagonist in 'The Heather Blazing'. Drawing on his own and his father’s childhood memories as well as his first-hand experiences of working as a journalist at the Irish Supreme Court, Tóibín creates a fictional realm which is sharply divided by the conflicting perspectives of the past and present Irish societies. This realm is embodied in the protagonist, Eamon Redmon, a high court judge. As a figure who was raised at the core of nationalist ideology and Catholic conservatism, Redmon is unable to establish an identity which fits the modernized and liberalized Irish community of the late Twentieth century. His mind is replete with the vestiges of Irish nationalist spirit and conservative culture as revealed through the narratives of his memories. Even though he seems to have abandoned his religious and nationalist views, his memory functions as a secure store which he recurrently visits. In his memory, concepts of moral / cultural conservatism and patriotism are personified in his father and Éamon De Valera, the prominent Irish politician after whom Redmon is named. From a broader perspective, Redmon’s personal memory represents the collective memory of the whole Irish nation which has been transformed into an internationalized / liberalized secular country while arguably bound to its traditional identity.

In response to a paper I delivered at the "Institutions and Ireland: Medicine, Health, and Welfare" conference at Trinity College, Dublin in January 2016, I was generously invited to contribute to the "Perceptions of Pregnancy" blog. In this post I offer an account of the political and aesthetic ends to which references to Ireland’s Lock hospitals and the discourses of sexual hygiene with which they were enmeshed are deployed in the writings of James Joyce and Oliver St John Gogarty.

"Perceptions of Pregnancy" is an interdisciplinary and international network for researchers working on fertility, pregnancy and childbirth, which grew out of the "Perceptions of Pregnancy: From the Medieval to the Modern" conference, held at the University of Hertfordshire from 16-18 July 2014. The network and associated blog are run by Dr Jennifer Evans and Dr Ciara Meehan of the School of Humanities, University of Hertfordshire.

The "Perceptions of Pregnancy" site is an extremely valuable and ever-evolving resource for scholars and general readers alike and is well worth a visit.

For over fifty years, this poet/artist has written but never published his poetry. After much hesitation, he now brings forth this first selection, a fifth of the corpus. It reflects a multicultural heritage, and the richness that diversity of experience across the globe brings. There is frequently a close relationship between writings, especially particular resonance between this poetry, and his occasional art. Certain themes in poetry or prose are picked up, cited or visualized in the paintings. Allusions to scripture or spiritual references also occur. This is an extract - the full book can be purchased from this online seller: http://www.books.ie/no-man-s-land-selected-poetry-art .

Irish folklore has been observed, in its " first life " (Honko 2013), through traditions, customs, narratives, tunes or sayings in various communities. These experiences have been collected and archived, and have since been reused and recycled in other contexts by politicians, poets, visual artists, sportsmen, tourism officers, museum curators, writers and musicians. The age of technology facilitates the " second life " of Irish folklore through the digital humanities. Moreover, Irish folklore is constantly being rejuvenated by current research. This conference aims to explore the rich traditions of Irish folklore, looking at the various ways it is being or has been repurposed and reinvented. We hope to bring together researchers at various stages of their careers, both professional and postgraduate, working on all aspects of the folklore of Ireland. We particularly welcome proposals that make use of innovative presentation methods and those in languages other than English. Proposals are invited for individual papers and panels from all (inter)disciplinary perspectives. Topics may include (but are not limited to) the study of legends, myths, beliefs, folk-tales, songs, rhymes and riddles, music, dance, sayings and proverbs, customs, oral history, etc. as well as their reuse in:
- The visual arts (paintings, sculptures, dance, etc), iconography and architecture,
- Film, television and radio
- Advertising, tourism, the diaspora and folklore around the world,
- Politics, sociology
- Literature, in English or as Gaeilge
- Children's literature
- Food and drink
- Music
- Theatre and performance
- Comparative approaches of the reuse of Irish folklore and international folklore
- Urban folklore
- Folkloristics and anthropology
- Ecology, agriculture and geography
- History and archaeology
- Philosophy and theology

confirmed keynote speakers :
Dr. Lillis Ó Laoire, National University of Ireland, Galway
Dr. Barbara Hillers, University College Dublin
Dr. Rióna Ní Fhrighil, National University of Ireland, Galway

Invited poet: Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill

More so than other regions within the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland’s deep-seated religious traditions, Catholic and Protestant alike, have shaped the roles and structures of both the public and private lives of men and women.  Within the legal and political spheres, both religions (and governments) find common ground on issues such as abortion and contraception, which is evidenced in the strict controls placed on abortion in Northern Ireland (the only region in the UK to have such limits) and the late arrival of legal contraception in the Republic of Ireland, where it also remains illegal to perform abortions, and until recently to even disseminate information on obtaining an abortion.  In addition, reforms to domestic violence legislation in Northern Ireland in 1980 was applicable to “married couples only and not to cohabitees, since the latter ‘chose to live in sin they would have to face the consequences’”, though this legislation was subsequently amended to include those women cohabitating with their partners (McWilliams in Hughes, 83).  In essence, such laws place a woman’s bodily and reproductive rights second to men’s, a legal status that echoes the domestic reality of many Northern Irish homes.  While the rest of the UK was moving forward (the Abortion Act was passed in 1967 and the workplace became more female-friendly with the Equal Pay Act of 1970 and the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975), Northern Ireland lagged behind with regards to prioritizing issues concerning women.  While similar legislation was passed in Northern Ireland soon after the British originals (with the aforementioned exception of the Abortion Act), the sectarian nature of the Troubles meant that “[s]ubsequent legislation in the field of employment rights has shifted the emphasis to tackling religious and political discrimination”, rather than gender discrimination (Mahon and Morgan in Galligan et.al, 61).  Such legislation perhaps further discouraged working-class women from speaking out for their own rights, as it would have significantly affected their working-class male counterparts.  Thus, the struggle simply to gain an active role in the male-dominated political process has meant that raising women’s concerns is often postponed or avoided: for example, the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition (NIWC) put such issues as abortion on the backburner, seeing their priority as solely “woman’s participation, and campaigning on reproductive choice would not have contributed strategically to that end” (Fearon 27).  The odds have surely been stacked against the women of the province.
Following from this, my paper will consider the policing of women by men within the home and the workplace, as well as the policing of women by other women, in three plays by Gary Mitchell: As the Beast Sleeps, The Force of Change, and Loyal Women.  Within these plays, it is evident that Mitchell ultimately reflects distinct and separate spheres for men and women in his drama, as gendered space exists both within and without of the home.  There also exists an underlying desire, on behalf of the male characters, to keep the women confined to the private, domestic sphere, rather than the public, political sphere.  Within the home of Kyle and Sandra in As the Beast Sleeps, Sandra reigns supreme, though she is firmly excluded from the paramilitary undertakings of her husband; in the Antrim Road Police Station, the setting of The Force of Change, Caroline comes up against one obstacle after another as she tries to navigate her male-dominated workplace and maintain order in her own home; while in Loyal Women, the Women’s UDA is shown to have no autonomy from its father organization, and wind up perpetuating violence against their own at the behest of men.  But although these women are constantly met with challenges from male, as well as female, characters, they remain determined, strong, and resilient. Indeed, when considering the majority of female characters in Gary Mitchell’s plays, it is hard to imagine that he “‘found it hard to take women seriously. […] I took years fighting against it in my own psyche, this thing of not respecting women’” (quoted in McKay, 117).  If anything, the women in Mitchell’s plays are more deserving of respect than the men, as they constitute some of the strongest characters in his oeuvre. 

Works Cited
Fearon, Kate. Women’s Work: The Story of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition. Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1999.

Galligan, Yvonne, Eilís Ward and Rick Wilford, eds. Contesting Politics: Women in Ireland, North and South. Oxford: Westview Press, 1999.

Hughes, Eamonn, ed. Culture and Politics in Northern Ireland: 1960-1990. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1991.

McKay, Susan. Northern Protestants: An Unsettled People. Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 2005.

The topic of pederasty in "The Sisters" has attracted extensive commentary. In this discussion, the boy's confusion, growing up at the crux of two views of masculinity, has not been explored. Moreover, Father Flynn's nostalgic view of boyhood, and his dependency on the company of the boy, also warrants exploration. Furthermore, little has been made of the boy's antagonistic relationship with Father Flynn's sisters, as there is evidence in the story that the boy is considered corruptive. It is my contention that pederasty is not the larger issue, as in another context, this could be contested. Rather, the boundary between the boy and adults is constructed across two opposing ideals of masculinity, obliterating any possibility of contestation. Subsequently, sentient and reflexive aspects of the boy's characterization deviate from how children are viewed by adult characters in Dubliners.

Cé gur mar fhile is fearr aithne ar an Árannach Máirtín Ó Direáin (1918 - 1988), chleacht sé prós chomh maith i gcaitheamh a shaoil, altanna a bhformhór, a foilsíodh in irisí agus nuachtáin mar An Stoc, Ar Aghaidh, Scéala Éireann, Feasta agus araile. Tá éagsúlacht mhór ábhar sa gcnuasach seo: an saol in Árainn agus an file ina ghasúr, cúrsaí litríochta, saol na cathrach le hais saol na tuaithe chomh maith le blúiríní beaga cumadóireachta. Tá rannóg grianghraf sa leabhar chomh maith a bhí le feiceáil sa taispeántas Máirtín Ó Direáin Fathach File / Reluctant Modernist 1918-1988, a chuir an t-eagarthóir, Síobhra Aiken, i dtoll a chéile.

Aintzane Legarreta Mentxaka,  "La Vida Vasca de Kate O'Brien" [original title: 'Mary Lavelle']  [commissioned]. El Correo Culture Supplement. 15 September 2018, p. 10.
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Kate O'Brien (1897-1974) es una de las novelistas más importantes de Irlanda, y una escritora de nota en la literatura del siglo veinte en lengua inglesa. Su novela 'Mary Lavelle', que algunos críticos consideran su mejor obra, está situada en Euskadi. Y su carrera, aunque pocos lo saben, comenzó en Bilbo en 1922...

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This entire volume is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which enables you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work in its entirety for personal and non-commercial use, providing editor and author attribution is clearly stated. Au Autobiographies (London: Macmillan, 1955). AVA A Vision: An Explanation of Life Founded upon the Writings of Giraldus and upon certain Doctrines attributed to

[Spanish language article]
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Esta es la primera publicación sobre ‘El Aliento y el Barro’ (‘The Spirit and the Clay’), by Shevawn Lynam, en Euskadi o en el estado. Da a conocer la novela como un documento único sobre la resistencia vasca contra el Franquismo en la clandestinidad, basado en hechos reales recogidos por la autora irlandesa. Nueve capítulos interconectados cuentan la historia de vascas y vascos de a pie, trabajando contra el régimen durante dieciseis años, desde la derrota del bando democrático en la guerra civil hasta la traición de la asamblea general de la ONU.
.........
This is the first publication about 'The Spirit and the Clay', by Shevawn Lynam, to appear in the Basque Country or Spain. It brings attention to the novel as a unique document about the Basque underground resistance against Francoism, based on real events gathered by the Irish author. Nine interconnected chapters tell the stories of ordinary Basque women and men, working against the regime for sixteen years, from the defeat of the pro-democracy side in the civil war to the treason of the UN General Assembly.
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“La Novela de la Corresponsal" /El Aliento y el Barro/ The Spirit and the Clay” [commissioned].
El Correo Culture Supplement. 20 October 2018, p. 8.

The following dissertation will explore the following selection of the word of Brian O'Nolan; At Swim Two Birds, The Third Policeman, The Dalkey Archive and his final novel An Béal Bocht, along with his columns for The Irish Times, Cruiskeen Lawn. Completed during my degree at Mary Immaculate College in Limerick City.

This chapter places translation at the center of the approaches to the study of the modes of circulation and reading of (world) literature. Drawing on Lawrence Venuti’s concern with translation as an intermediary practice, the author argues that ‘universal’ literary texts and authors exist in a fluid space of global connectedness characterized by confluences and asymmetries. As they journey through literary translation, views which remain ignored in one particular historical or geographical context may encounter a more hospitable reception and ideas imagined to be representative of one particular community may be redefined through the semantics and politics of new interpretive communities. The author takes issue with Pascale Casanova’s center-periphery paradigm and discusses how Casanova’s essentialist approach edits out the many complexities attached to the circulation of literary texts in transnational contexts. By focusing on the translation and circulation of James Joyce, one of the most famous writers of world literature, the author stresses the relevance of translation through a discussion of the transhistorical and transcultural manoeuvres at work in the circulation of Joyce’s works as they move from national to international contexts across different borders and enter the global informational flow.

pp. 17-43.

This chapter tracks how Halloween and Day of the Dead have increasingly entangled across the U.S./Mexican Borderlands throughout the 2010s.  It then reviews the scholarly disputes over whether these two holidays enjoy genuinely pre-colonial indigenous origins or strictly Medieval European ones; yet though the two camps may disagree vociferously, they nevertheless both still conclude that these holidays engage in anti-colonial resistances, since they belie the erasure of native peoples.  Then, by means of Octavio Paz’s The Labyrinth of Solitude, this discussion pivots to an examination of how the dead resist colonialism in literature; of necessity, this argument also draws upon (and critiques) Bakhtin’s theory of the Carnivalesque as it can be applied to both holidays.

The paper discusses the relationship between homosexuality and Icelandic national identity in Sjón's novel Moonstone (2016, original text 2013), and compares it to At Swim, Two Boys (2002) by the Irishman Jamie O'Neill. Both are historical novels, set during times of struggle and fight for independence in Iceland and Ireland. A focal point in both, moreover, is the fact that the young protagonists' same-sex desires are marginalised by the society and prevailing nationalist ideologies: their sexuality makes them incompatible with the national ideal. Sjón’s and O’Neill’s approach to the topic and their conclusions are somewhat different, however, and the comparison between the two novels serves to underline that fiction can, and does, deal with questions regarding queer sexualities, national identities and their histories in various different ways.

This essay will analyse the dysfunctional family in Edna O’Brien’s A Pagan Place (1970) as a reflection of the social reality of post-independence Ireland. It will be argued that the overlapping of family, State and Church, promoted and imposed by De Valera’s Constitution in 1937, is at the core of family dysfunction as presented in the novel. Furthermore, it will be suggested that some of the dysfunctional symptoms that can be found in A Pagan Place, such as domestic violence or male alcoholism, would be related to a dysfunctional masculinity derived from the postcolonial condition of the country.

Janet McNeill’s fiction has experienced a recent revival, led by London-based publisher Turnpike Books, which reissued three of her novels between 2014 and 2015, with a fourth due in autumn 2019. The Maiden Dinosaur (1964/2015) is her best-known book, and it depicts Northern Ireland at a transitional moment in its history, during the post-war period and preceding the recommencement of the Troubles. McNeill explores vestigial systems of power that endure in Northern Ireland amidst the shifting gender, class, religious, and political contexts of the early 1960s. This essay analyses her rendering of the middle-class Northern Protestant house, and argues that it is a metonym for patriarchal structures that pervade mid-century Belfast society. McNeill examines how the women of her generation manoeuvre within this circumscribed space, and her novel represents an aesthetic gesture of self-liberation.