Table Of ContentA Companion to Irish Literature
Volume One
A Companion to Irish Literature, Volume One & Tw o Edited by Julia M. Wright
© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978-1-405-18809-8
A Companion to Irish Literature
Volume Two
Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture
This series offers comprehensive, newly written surveys of key periods and movements and certain major
authors, in English literary culture and history. Extensive volumes provide new perspectives and positions on
contexts and on canonical and post - canonical texts, orientating the beginning student in new fi elds of study
and providing the experienced undergraduate and new graduate with current and new directions, as pioneered
and developed by leading scholars in the fi eld.
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A C O M P A N I O N T O
I
RISH
L
ITERATURE
Volume One
EDITED BY
JULIA M. WRIGHT
A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication
A C O M P A N I O N T O
I
RISH
L
ITERATURE
Volume Two
EDITED BY
JULIA M. WRIGHT
A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication
This edition fi rst published 2010
© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd except for editorial material and organization
© 2010 Julia M. Wright
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A companion to Irish literature / edited by Julia M. Wright.
p. cm. – (Blackwell companions to literature and culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4051-8809-8 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. English literature–Irish authors–History and criticism. 2. Epic literature, Irish–History
and criticism. 3. Irish literature–History and criticism. 4. Northern Ireland–In
literature. 5. Ireland–In literature. I. Wright, Julia M.
PR8711.C66 2010
820.9'9417–dc22
2010011933
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Set in 11 on 13 pt Garamond 3 by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited
Printed in Singapore
1 2010
Contents
VOLUME I
Acknowledgments xi
Notes on Contributors xiii
Introduction 1
Julia M. Wright
Part One: The Middle Ages 15
1. Táin Bó Cúailnge 17
Ann Dooley
2. Finn and the Fenian Tradition 27
Joseph Falaky Nagy
3. The Reception and Assimilation of Continental Literature 39
Barbara Lisa Hillers
Part Two: The Early Modern Era 57
4. Bardic Poetry, Masculinity, and the Politics of Male
Homosociality 59
Sarah E. McKibben
5. Annalists and Historians in Early Modern Ireland, 1450–1700 76
Bernadette Cunningham
6. “Hungry Eyes” and the Rhetoric of Dispossession: English
Writing from Early Modern Ireland 92
Patricia Palmer
7. Kinds of Irishness: Henry Burnell and Richard Head 108
Deana Rankin
vi Contents
Part Three: The Eighteenth Century 125
8. Crossing Acts: Irish Drama from George Farquhar to
Thomas Sheridan 127
Helen M. Burke
9. Parnell and Early Eighteenth-Century Irish Poetry 142
Andrew Carpenter
10. Jonathan Swift and Eighteenth-Century Ireland 161
Clement Hawes
11. Merriman’s Cúirt An Mheonoíche and Eighteenth-Century
Irish Verse 178
Liam P. Ó Murchú
12. Frances Sheridan and Ireland 193
Kathleen M. Oliver
13. “The Indigent Philosopher”: Oliver Goldsmith 210
James Watt
14. Edmund Burke 226
Luke Gibbons
15. The Drama of Richard Brinsley Sheridan 243
Robert W. Jones
Part Four: The Romantic Period 259
16. United Irish Poetry and Songs 261
Mary Helen Thuente
17. Maria Edgeworth and (Inter)national Intelligence 276
Susan Manly
18. Mary Tighe: A Portrait of the Artist for the Twenty-First Century 292
Harriet Kramer Linkin
19. Thomas Moore: After the Battle 310
Jeffery Vail
20. The Role of the Political Woman in the Writings of Lady Morgan
(Sydney Owenson) 326
Susan B. Egenolf
Part Five: The Rise of Gothic 343
21. Charles Robert Maturin: Ireland’s Eccentric Genius 345
Robert Miles
Contents vii
22. Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu: Gothic Grotesque and the
Huguenot Inheritance 362
Alison Milbank
23. A Philosophical Home Ruler: The Imaginary Geographies of
Bram Stoker 377
Lisa Hopkins
Part Six: The Victorian Era 393
24. Scribes and Storytellers: The Ethnographic Imagination in
Nineteenth-Century Ireland 395
Stiofán Ó Cadhla
25. Reconciliation and Emancipation: The Banims and Carleton 411
Helen O’Connell
26. Davis, Mangan, Ferguson: Irish Poetry, 1831–1849 427
Matthew Campbell
27. The Great Famine in Literature, 1846–1896 444
Melissa Fegan
28. Dion Boucicault: From Stage Irishman to Staging Nationalism 460
Scott Boltwood
29. Oscar Wilde’s Convictions, Speciesism, and the Pain
of Individualism 476
Dennis Denisoff
VOLUME TWO
Introduction 1
Julia M. Wright
Part Seven: Transitions: Victorian, Revival, Modern 17
30. Cultural Nationalism and Irish Modernism 19
Michael Mays
31. Defi ning Irishness: Bernard Shaw and the Irish Connection on
the English Stage 35
Christopher Innes
32. The Novels of Somerville and Ross 50
Vera Kreilkamp
33. W.B. Yeats and the Dialectics of Misrecognition 66
Gregory Castle
viii Contents
34. John Millington Synge – Playwright and Poet 83
Ann Saddlemyer
35. James Joyce and the Creation of Modern Irish Literature 98
Michael Patrick Gillespie
Part Eight: Developments in Genre and Representation after 1930 113
36. The Word of Politics/Politics of the Word: Immanence and
Transdescendence in Sean O’Casey and Samuel Beckett 115
Sandra Wynands
37. Elizabeth Bowen: A Home in Writing 129
Eluned Summers-Bremner
38. Changing Times: Frank O’Connor and Seán O’Faoláin 144
Paul Delaney
39. “Ireland is small enough”: Louis MacNeice and Patrick Kavanagh 159
Alan Gillis
40. Irish Mimes: Flann O’Brien 176
Joseph Brooker
Part Nine: Debating Social Change after 1960 193
41. Reading William Trevor and Finding Protestant Ireland 195
Gregory A. Schirmer
42. The Mythopoeic Ireland of Edna O’Brien’s Fiction 209
Maureen O’Connor
43. Anglo-Irish Confl ict in Jennifer Johnston’s Fiction 224
Silvia Diez Fabre
44. Living History: The Importance of Julia O’Faolain’s Fiction 234
Christine St Peter
45. Holding a Mirror Up to a Society in Evolution: John McGahern 248
Eamon Maher
Part Ten: Contemporary Literature: Print, Stage, and Screen 263
46. Brian Friel: From Nationalism to Post-Nationalism 265
F.C. McGrath
47. Telling the Truth Slant: The Poetry of Seamus Heaney 281
Eugene O’Brien
