Modern Irish Classics

For a small country, Ireland has a remarkable literary tradition. Students who take this subject will examine some of the most distinguished and innovative Irish literature of modern times. Authors to be studied may include Jonathan Swift, Eibhlín Dhubh Ní Chonaill (Evelyn O’Connell), Maria Edgeworth, W.B. Yeats, J.M. Synge, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Elizabeth Bowen, and Seamus Heaney. Students will study how writers responded to key social, political, and historical issues: colonialism and postcolonialism, gender, class and religious relations, the cultural revival and counter-revival, the place of Irishness within world literature. These Irish writers are caught up in British and European political and intellectual developments and this subject will be especially alert to the contribution of Irish writers to twentieth-century modernism. The subject examines a range of genres, including fiction, drama, poetry and the essay. It will produce an understanding of the Irish literary tradition in an international context and develop capacity to reflect on the relationship between literature, politics and culture.