SYLLABUS

NB: Please note that the classes begin on 23 February 2021. The selection of texts in the syllabus is tentative; please check the course site on Moodle to find an updated reading list and questions for each week of the course.

Week 1
Introduction: The Impossible Irish Pastoral

Week 2
Romantic Legacies: W. B. Yeats, J. M. Synge
Texts:
W. B. Yeats, “The Fisherman”, “The Wilde Swans at Coole”, “The Second Coming”, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”, “The Municipal Gallery Revisited”
J. M. Synge, The Aran Islands (selection), “Samhain”, “Queens”
H. D. Thoreau, Walden (selection)

Week 3
Patrick Kavanagh’s Rural Alienation
Texts:
Patrick Kavanagh, The Great Hunger
Oliver Goldsmith, The Deserted Village (selection)
Selection of poems by John Clare

Week 4
Irish Language Poetry and Ecolinguistics
Texts:
Selection of poems by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Máirtín Ó Direáin and Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh
James McCloskey, “A Global Silencing”, The Poetry Ireland Review 52 (Spring, 1997): 41-46.

Week 5
Seamus Heaney’s Pastoral Politics
Texts:
Selection of poems from Heaney’s The Death of a Naturalist, Field Work and Sweeney Astray
Selection of poems by William Wordsworth and Ted Hughes
Seamus Heaney, “The Makings of a Music: Reflections on Wordsworth and Yeats”, Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968-1978 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1980), 61-78.

Week 6
Sea and Beach: Derek Mahon’s Fluid Allegiances
Texts:
Selection of poems by Mahon, including “Homage to Gaia”, “The Disused Shed in County Wexford”, “North Sea” and “The Apotheosis of Tins”
Eóin Flannery, “‘Listen to the Leaves’: Derek Mahon’s Evolving Ecologies”, Criticism, 57.3 (Summer 2015): 377-401.

Week 7
Nature, Science, Culture: Caitríona O’Reilly
Texts:
Selection of poems by O’Reilly, including “Polar”, “Amanita Virosa”, “Cedar of Lebanon” and The Sea Cabinet
Selection of poems by Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plat
Jefferson Holdridge, “Reclaiming the Wilderness: Nature and Perception in Caitríona O'Reilly”, Études irlandaises, 31.1 (2006): 11-25.
Derek Woods, “Scale in Ecological Science Writing” in Scott Slovic, Swarnalatha Rangarajan and Vidya Sarveswaran eds., Routledge Handbook of Ecocriticism and Environmental Communication (Oxon: Routledge, 2019), 118-128.

Week 8
More Mushrooms: Ailbhe Darcy
Texts:
Selection of poems by Darcy from Imaginary Menagerie and Insistence, including “Silver”, “Mushrooms”, “Jellyfish” and “Alphabet”
Ailbhe Darcy, “Or, How I Learned to Keep Worrying: Collaborative Writing, Motherhood, and the Atom Bomb”, The Critical Flame 48 (May/June 2017). http://criticalflame.org/or-how-i-learned-to-keep-worrying-collaborative-writing-motherhood-and-the-atom-bomb/
Brenda Wineapple, “The Politics of Politics; or, How the Atomic Bomb Didn't Interest Gertrude Stein and Emily Dickinson”, South Central Review 23.3 (Fall, 2006): pp. 37-45.

Week 9
Deep Time: Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin
Texts:
Selection of poems by Ní Chuilleanáin, including “The Crevasse”, “Glacier”, “Permafrost Woman”, “Pygmalion’s Image” and “Letter to Pearse Hutchinson”
Timothy Clark, “Ecofeminism”, The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and the Environment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 121-135.
Joseph R. DesJardins, “Radical Environmental Philosophy: Deep Ecology and Ecofeminism” in Environmental Ethics: An Introduction to Environmental Philosophy, fifth edition (Wadsworth, Boston, MA: Cenage Learning, 2013) 203-231

Week 10
Embodied Perception: Medbh McGuckian
Texts:
Selection of McGuckian’s poems from her more recent collections, including “Mr McGregor’s Garden” and “The Contingency of Befalling”

Week 11
In the Animal Skin: Sinéad Morrissey and Leontia Flynn
Texts:
Selection of poems by Morrissey, including “Restoration”, “Pilots”, “Gull Song” and “Monteverdi Vespers
Selection of poems by Flynn, including “The Fish in the Berlin Aquarium”
Les Murray, “Ariel”, “Emerald Doves”
Sections on “Anthropocentrism” and “Anthropomorphism” from Timothy Clark, The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and the Environment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

Week 12
On Weather and Ghosts: Conor O’Callaghan
Texts:
Extracts from O’Callaghan’s novel Nothing on Earth and a selection of his poems, including “January Drought”, “The Modern Pastoral Elegy”, “Any day Now” and “Trailer Park Études”
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (selection)
Greg Garrard, “The Trouble with Apocalypse” in Ecocriticism (Oxon: Rougledge, 2012), 113-117.