Description
Book SynopsisThis volume explores the history of Irish writing between the Second World War (or the ''Emergency'') in 1939 and the re-emergence of violence in Northern Ireland in the 1970s. It situates modern Irish writing within the contexts of cultural transition and transnational connection, often challenging pre-existing perceptions of Irish literature in this period as stagnant and mundane. While taking into account the grip of Irish censorship and cultural nationalism during the mid-twentieth century, these essays identify an Irish literary culture stimulated by international political horizons and fully responsive tochanges in publishing, readership, and education. The book combines valuable cultural surveys with focussed discussions of key literary moments, and of individual authors such as Seán O''Faoláin, Samuel Beckett, Edna O''Brien, and John McGahern.
Trade Review'… a remarkably ambitious project, taking the temperature of Irish literature from 1730 to the present in approximately 2,400 pages.' Anthony Roche, Irish Times
'The final essay of the collection, by Shaun Richards, is a very useful overview of the development of critical approaches and practices in the period. Irish Literature in Transition 1940-1980 is an expertly-edited collection of essays. The essays are lucid, insightful and jargon-free. For Irish Studies scholars of this period, it is indispensable.' Eoghan Smith, Irish Studies Review
Table of ContentsIntroduction Eve Patten; Part I. After the War: Ideologies in Transition: 1. The Second World War and its literary legacies Guy Woodward; 2. Outside the whale: Seán O'Faoláin and the European public intellectual Brad Kent; 3. Irish writers and Europe Aidan O'Malley; 4. Becoming a Republic: Irish writing in transition Nicholas Allen; Part II. Genres in Transition: 5. Intermodernism and the middlebrow in Irish writing John Brannigan; 6. Transitional life writing: Frank O'Connor and the autobiographical tradition Muireann Leech; 7. Somehow it is not the same: Irish theatre and transition Chris Morash; 8. Samuel Beckett, Flann O'Brien and the literature of absurdity David Wheatley; Part III. Sex, Politics and Literary Protest: 9. Censorship, law and literature Eibhear Walshe; 10. Sex, dissent and Irish fiction: reading John McGahern Frank Shovlin; 11. History, memory and protest in Irish theatre Emilie Pine; 12. Violence, politics and the poetry of the troubles Rosie Lavan; Part IV. Identities and Connections: 13. State, space and experiment in Irish language prose writing Máirín Nic Eoin; 14. Anglo-Ireland: the big house novel in transition Heather Ingman; 15. American-Irish literary relations Ellen McWilliams; 16. 'Home rule in our literature': Irish-British poetic relations Tom Walker; Part V. Retrospective Frameworks: Criticism in Transition: 17. Literary biography in transition Paul Delaney; 18. Publishing, Penguin and Irish writing Paul Rooney; 19. Curriculum to canon: Irish writing and education Margaret Kelleher; 20. Critics, criticism and the formation of an Irish literary canon Shaun Richards.
