The Irish Literary Revival

3 units

The class will study major writings by Oscar Wilde, W. B. Yeats, J. M. Synge, James Joyce, & Flann O'Brien within the contexts of the language movement, colonialism, cultural nationalism, the socialist movement and the 1913 Lockout, the Easter Rising and the War for Independence, the Civil War, the founding of the Irish Free State, the Partition, and the Irish Theocracy. Wilde's notions of the primacy of art with regard to politics and their elaboration by W. I. Thompson and Declan Kiberd will be an organizing principle in the course. The class will see two films, offer oral reports, and write papers.