SYLLABUS
For reading assigned for the individual classes please go to Moodle.
Please note that there will be NO CLASS ON FRIDAY 19 February. A make-up session will be offered at the end of the semester.
Feb 19 - NO CLASS
Feb 26 - INTRODUCTION
Mar 4
NATIONAL REVIVAL AND MODERNISM
Douglas Hyde, Patrick Pearse, J. M. Synge
Mar 11 and 18
W. B. YEATS
Apr 1 and 4
MID-CENTURY BACKWATERS
Denis Devlin, Thomas MacGreevy, Brian Coffey, Austin Clarke, Samuel Beckett
Apr 15 and 22
IRISH LANGUAGE POETRY
Máirtín Ó Direáin, Séan Ó Ríordáin, Eoghan Ó Tuairisc
Apr 29 and May 5
LATE MODERNISTS, LATER REVIVALISTS
Patrick Kavanagh, Thomas Kinsella, John Montague
May 13
AFTER MODERNISM
Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, Sinéad Morrissey
OBJECTIVES
Literary production of the Irish Revival and from post-independence Ireland has traditionally been interpreted in terms of its antiquarian, nationalist, and post-colonial intent. As such it had often been placed in opposition to the modernist emphasis on internationalism, formal experiment, and innovation. In accord with recent development in Irish literary studies, this course looks past these apparent contradictions and explores aspects of dialogue between the forming national Irish literature and early modernism. Modernist values and thought, as we shall see, have their traceable imprints not only in Yeats’s middle and late poetry and a number of poetics emerging around the mid-20th century, but also in some of the most recent output by contemporary Irish poets.