The course concerns Irish poetry from the last decade of the 18th century up to the present. It will investigate the ways poetry has been inextricably linked with notions of cultural/social and political/historical issues. The course will trace poetic responses to the sequence of troubles that has characterized Irish history. We shall consider how poetry engaged with and participated in what can be described as a war of words, how the language and rhetoric of poetry has been shaped by violence.
Authors whose works are considered include Eibhlín Dhubh Ní Chonaill, Brian Merrimen, Antoine Rafteirí, Charlotte Brooke, Thomas Moore, James Clarance Mangan, Thomas Davis, Samuel Ferguson, Aubrey Thomas de Vere, Oscar Wilde, Douglas Hyde, W. B. Yeats, Thomas McDonagh, Patrick Pearse, Patrick Kavanagh, John Hewitt, Brendan Kenelly, Thomas Kinsella, John Montague, Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon, Michael Longley, Eavan Boland, Medbh McGuckian, Paul Muldoon, Tom Paulin,
The course will proceed by presentations to be followed by discussion.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ANTHOLOGIES
Kennelly, Brendan, ed.: The Penguin Book of Irish Verse. 2nd ed. London: Penguin, 1981
Kinsella, Thomas, ed.: the New Oxfod Book of Irish Verse. Oxford: oxford University Press, 1986
Ormsby, Frank, ed.: A Rage for Order. Poetry of the Northern Ireland Troubles. Belfast: The Blackstaff Press, 1992
Regan, Stephen: Irish Writing. An anthology of Irish Literature in English 1789-1939. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004
CRITICISM
Dean, Seamus: Strange Country. Modernity and Nationhood in Irish Writing since 1790. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997
Heaney, Seamus: Finders Keepers: Selected Prose 1971-2001. London: Faber and Faber, 1995
Kiberd, Declan: Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation. London: Jonathan Cape, 1995
Kiberd, Declan: Irish Classics. London: Granta Books, 2000
Kiberd, Declan and Longely, Edna: Multi-Culturalism: The View from the Two Irelands. Cork: Cork University Press, 2001
Kinsella, Thomas: The Dual Tradition. An Essay on Poetry and Politics in Ireland. Manchester: Carcanet Press, 1995
Lloyd, David: Anomalous States. Irish Writing and the Post-Colonial Moment. Dublin: Lilliput Press, 1993
Longley, Edna: Poetry in the Wars. Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books, 1986
Longley, Edna: The Living Stream. Literature and Revisionism in Ireland. Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books, 1994
Longley, Edna: Poetry and Posterity. Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books, 2000
Longley, Edna, ed.: Culture in Ireland: Division or Diversity? Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies, The Queen’s University of Belfast, 1991
Mc Cormack, W. J.: From Burke to Beckett. Ascendancy, Tradition and Betrayal in Literary History. Cork: Cork University Press, 1994 MacDonagh, Thomas: Literature in Ireland. Studies Irish and Anglo-Irish. Dublin: Talbot Press, 1916
Matthews, Steven: Irish Poetry: Politics, History, Negotiation. The Evolving Debate, 1969 to the Present. London: Macmillan, 1997
Paulin, Tom: Ireland and the English Crisis. Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books, 1984
Wills, Clair: Improprieties. Politics and Sexuality in Northern Irish Poetry. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993
HISTORY
Bew, Paul: Ireland: The Politics of Enmity 1789-2006. Oxford: Oxford University press, 2007 Crowley, Tony> Wars of Words. The Politics of Language in Ireland 1537-2004. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005
Foster, R. F., ed.: The Oxford History of Ireland. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989
Foster, R. F.: Modern Ireland 1600-1972. London: Penguin Books, 1989
Kearney, Richard: Postnationalist Ireland. Politics, Culture, Philosophy. London: Routledge, 1997
MacDonagh, Oliver: States of Mind. Two Centuries of Anglo-Irish Conflict. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1983
Madden, F. J. M.: The History of Ireland. London: Hodder Education, 2005
Each student will be assigned an individual research project.