Syllabus
SYLLABUS
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 19NO CLASS
Feb 26INTRODUCTION
Mar 4NATIONAL REVIVAL AND MODERNISMDouglas Hyde, Patrick Pearse, J. M. Synge
Mar 11 and 18W. B. YEATS
Apr 1 and 4MID-CENTURY BACKWATERSDenis Devlin, Thomas MacGreevy, Brian Coffey, Austin Clarke, Samuel Beckett
Apr 15 and 22IRISH LANGUAGE POETRYMáirtín Ó Direáin, Séan Ó Ríordáin, Eoghan Ó Tuairisc
Apr 29 and May 5LATE MODERNISTS, LATER REVIVALISTSPatrick Kavanagh, Thomas Kinsella, John Montague, Louis MacNeice
May 13AFTER MODERNISMSeamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, Sinéad Morrissey
Annotation
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.