Writing Modern Ireland: (Clemson University Press: Ireland in the Arts & Humanities)

Writing Modern Ireland examines the complex literary manifestations of Ireland and Irishness from the turn of the twentieth century to very recently. Together with examinations of the nation, the collected essays consider Irish identities that may be sexual, racial, regional, gendered, disabled and able-bodied, traumatized and in the process of healing. Identity, like literary texts, is a constant process of making and remaking, revision and publication. This collection takes up the question of what it means to write modern Ireland, evoking the many resonances that name will carry: a mythic place, a land controlled from elsewhere, a nation hoped for and achieved, a nation denied and resisted, an island divided, an idea soaked in fantasies and dreams, a homeland abandoned in searches for brighter futures, a land of opportunity, a people who are many people, and a place defined by writers who both empower and challenge it. W. B. Yeats looms large, as he does in modern Irish writing, and in commemoration of his sesquicentennial year. Building on a themed issue of The South Carolina Review, the present volume is expanded and rededicated by Catherine E. Paul (Clemson University). It features critical essays by Ronald Schuchard on Yeats, Michael Sidnell on Beckett, Liam Harte on Sebastian Barry, Jefferson Holdridge on contemporary Irish poets, and Thomas Dillon Redshaw on the revival of the Cuala Press (illustrated), together with a host of significant scholarship and criticism by 14 additional international experts from the USA, UK, Belgium, France, and (of course) Ireland.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Catherine E. Paul * Writing Modern Ireland * Essays Ronald Schuchard * Yeats in Extremis Ed Madden * "Here, of all places": Geographies of Sexual and Gender Identity in Keith Ridgway's The Long Falling Michael J. Sidnell * Beckett's Discovery of Theater: Human Wishes, and the Dramaturgical Contexts of Eleutheria Wim Van Mierlo * "I have met you too late": James Joyce, W. B. Yeats and the Making of Chamber Music Liam Harte * The Politics of Pity in Sebastian Barry's A Long Long Way Margaret Mills Harper * Flesh and Bones: Anne Enright's The Gathering Alexandra Poulain * "Westward ho!": The Only Jealousy of Emer, From Noh to Tragedy Ken Monteith * Enabling Emer, Disabling the Sidhe: W. B. Yeats's The Only Jealousy of Emer Eamonn Wall * The Use of Memory: Michael Coady's All Souls John Dennison * "To construct something upon which to rejoice": Seamus Heaney's Prose Revisions Thomas Dillon Redshaw * Remains and Removals: Th e Cuala Press Revival, 1969-1989 Jonathan Allison * "The Old Moon-Phaser": Yeats, Auden, and MacNeice Michael Cade-Stewart * A Satyric Paradise: Th e Form of W. B. Yeats's "News for the Delphic Oracle" Wanda Balzano * Abroad and at Home: The Question of the Foreigner in Kate O'Brien's Mary Lavelle Jeanette Shumaker * The Deathly Conformity of Irish Women: Novels by Mary O'Donnell and Susan Knight Rand Brandes * Mercury in Taurus: W. B. Yeats and Ted Hughes Wayne K. Chapman * "Notes Chirruping Answer": Language as Music in James Joyce and Virginia Woolf Hedwig Schwall * Allegories of Writing: Figurations of Narcissus and Echo in W. B. Yeats's Work Jefferson Holdridge * "Halved Globe, Slowly Turning": Editing Irish Poetry in America * Contributors

About the Author :
Catherine E. Paul is Professor Emerita of English at Clemson University.