Reading Irish Literature

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This module will examine multiple representations of Irish political, national and cultural identity from the nineteenth century to the contemporary period. It will consider how key myths of national identity were formulated, debated, replicated and ousted by successive generations of Irish writers. The foundational role played by Augusta Gregory, W. B. Yeats and J. M. Synge in the Irish Literary Revival will be considered and the ambiguous but potent symbolism of their writing will be investigated. As 2016 marks the centenary of the Easter Rising and of the Battle of the Somme, the problematic depiction of war and revolution in a range of texts will particularly be highlighted. The implicit links between Joyce¿s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and 1916 will be considered as will O¿Casey¿s subversive representation of the Rising in The Plough and the Stars. The intertwining of violence and sexuality in Irish culture will be examined as will recurrent tropes of loss and traumatic memory. Postcolonial, cultural materialist and feminist theory will be drawn upon to ground debates and analysis of the texts on this course.