Irish Classics

I have tried to pay homage in what follows to two languages, which have often been considered inimical in their histories and workings: and I have suggested that their fortunes were utterly connected over more than five centuries, for all the antagonism between them. From the author's Introduction Inventing Ireland, Kiberd's most recent book, won the Irish Times Literature Prize and was acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic as a hugely important study of twentieth-century Irish literature. In his ambitious survey of the enduring Irish classics - works that stay fresh and challenge every generation - the author offers his readers something entirely vibrant: a brilliant and accessible discussion of the greatest work since 1600 in the two languages, Irish and English, that have shaped one of the world's most original literary cultures. Few critics have the linguistic ability to undertake such an overview, but Kiberd is a respected Gaelic scholar and he provides vivid and idiomatic translations that bring the Irish texts alive for the English speaking reader. He discusses the bitter poetry of Seathr n C itinn and D bh Bruadair and the prose of Jonathan Swift and Edmund Burke; links the modern achievements of R ord in and Cadhain with Yeats, Joyce and the other familiar figures of Irish modernism, and shows how all of them draw on early Irish themes. Irish Classics is a provocative, jargon-free and indispensable book.

About the Author :
Declan Kiberd is Professor of Anglo-Irish literature at University College Dublin.

Review :
'Occasionally one comes across a book capable of producing intense feelings of dismay, then joy; dismay on having revealed to oneself an unexpected deficit in one's knowledge, and joy at the author's scholarly relief of it. This is such a book.' Cal McCrystal, The Independent on Sunday; 'What Kiberd has succeeded in doing so remarkably is to draw together the writers in the two languages and in diverse cultural traditions within the same historical framework...His redrawing of Irish traditions along these lines is certain to become a classic of that literature in its own right.' The Sunday Tribune; '...[Kiberd] has the talent for popularising of the public intellectual. Witty, astute, and compulsively readable, he knows how to shape a critical narrative and where to slide in a comic aside...Irish Classics has an infectious verve about it...it tracks the course of Irish writing with brilliant lucidity and unflagging energy...whose powers to expound, amuse and exhilarate are second to none.' Terry Eagleton, The Guardian; 'Irish Classics is a magisterial, yet passionate, evocative and wonderfully accessible journey through the literary masterpieces in both Irish and English from the 16th century to the present. Declan Kiberd...presents a jargon-free guide that is an authoritative and insightful history of the island...' Scotland on Sunday; 'Declan Kiberd...is one of the very few contemporary critics with the skill, intelligence and linguistic competence to undertake such an ambitious critical enterprise. This is literary criticism of the best kind, enlightening and entertaining, authoritative and accessible, committed and inspiring.' Irish Times; '...a beautifully crafted survey of the inextinguishable classics from the bardie era to modern times. I shall treasure Kiberd's insights into a brilliant array of stars...' Kenneth Wright, The Herald; 'Irish Classics...boosts the old form of literary criticism with its original and exhilarating scenarios' The Independent; '[The] cleverness is both engaging and encyclopaedic' TLS