Post-crash Irish Fiction

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

What, and how, do writers create in the aftermath of a crisis of capitalism? How do we study the literature of our present moment and very recent past? This course explores the experimental Irish literature which flourished in the aftermath of the 2008-9 financial crash. Students will gain an understanding of the Irish modernist tradition and the realist novels that flourished during the prosperous years of the "Celtic Tiger", before diving into close analysis of the modernist-influenced novels of the 2010s, including Eimear McBride's A Girl is a Half-formed Thing, Mike McCormack's Solar Bones and Anna Burns' Milkman, and ask where this modernist "Movement" went next by looking at even more recent Irish novels. Students will also examine the material economic circumstances of literary production, as they discover the role of small, Arts Council-supported presses and magazines in revitalising Irish writing after the crash.