You may have to register before you can download all our books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
This book is the first truly interdisciplinary intervention into the burgeoning field of Irish ecological criticism. Providing original and nuanced readings of Irish cultural texts and personalities in terms of contemporary ecological criticism, Flannery’s readings of Irish literary fiction, poetry, travel writing, non-fiction, and essay writing are ground-breaking in their depth and scope. Explorations of figures and texts from Irish cultural and political history, including John McGahern, Derek Mahon, Roger Casement, and Tim Robinson, among many others, enable and invigorate the discipline of Irish cultural studies, and international ecocriticism on the whole. This book addresses the nee...
This book examines how the Irish environmental movement, which began gaining momentum in the 1970s, has influenced and been addressed by contemporary Irish writers, artists, and musicians. It examines Irish environmental writing, music, and art within their cultural contexts, considers how postcolonial ecocriticism might usefully be applied to Ireland, and analyzes the rhetoric of Irish environmental protests. It places the Irish environmental movement within the broader contexts of Irish national and postcolonial discourses, focusing on the following protests: the M3 Motorway, the Burren campaign, the Carnsore Point anti-nuclear protest, Shell to Sea, the turf debate, and the animal rights movement.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE ONSIDE NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 2018 The islands off the coast of Ireland have long been a source of fascination. Seen as repositories of an ancient Irish culture and the epitome of Irish romanticism, they have attracted generations of scholars, artists and filmmakers, from James Joyce to Robert O'Flaherty, looking for a way of life uncontaminated by modernity or materialism. But the reality for islanders has been a lot more complex. They faced poverty, hardship and official hostility, even while being expected to preserve an ancient culture and way of life. Writing in her 1936 autobiography, Peig Sayers, resident of Blaskets island, described it as 'this dreadful rock...
This lively survey of the ever-changing Irish-American experience contains “many perceptive, and sometimes surprising, observations” (The Irish Times). Irish-American Autobiography explores the evolution of Irishness in America through memoirs that describe, define, and redefine what it means to be Irish. From athletes and entertainers to saloon keepers, community activists, and Catholic priests, Irish-Americans of all stripes share their thoughts and perceptions on their ever-evolving ethnic identity. Poet and Irish studies specialist James Silas Rogers begins his evocative analysis with celebrity memoirs by athletes like boxer John L. Sullivan and ballplayer Connie Mack―written when ...
An Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library. This study examines the intersection of private and public spheres through the representation of memory in contemporary poetry by Irish women. Collins explores how memory shapes creativity in the work of well-known poets such as Eavan Boland, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Medbh McGuckian as well as in that of an exciting group of younger poets. This book analyses, for the first time, the complex responses to the past recorded by contemporary women poets in Ireland and the implications these have for the concept of a national tradition.
Islands have long been the subject of cultural fascination, but in recent decades, they have exerted an increasingly powerful centrifugal force, sending writers to the outer edges of the British-Irish archipelago in search of inspiration and insight. Drawing on contemporary ecocritical approaches, island studies, and emergent archipelagic perspectives, Ecocriticism and the Island explores a wide selection of island-themed creative non-fiction. Through a combination of textual analysis, and, where possible, original interviews and archival research, Pippa Marland offers new insights into the work of Tim Robinson, Brenda Chamberlain, Christine Evans, W.G. Sebald, Stephen Watts, Amy Liptrot, Ka...
Bioregionalism is an innovative way of thinking about place and planet from an ecological perspective. Although bioregional ideas occur regularly in ecocritical writing, until now no systematic effort has been made to outline the principles of bioregional literary criticism and to use it as a way to read, write, understand, and teach literature. The twenty-four original essays here are written by an outstanding selection of international scholars. The range of bioregions covered is global and includes such diverse places as British Columbia's Meldrum Creek and Italy's Po River Valley, the Arctic and the Outback. There are even forays into cyberspace and outer space. In their comprehensive in...
The global economy threatens the uniqueness of places, people, and experiences. In Here and There, Bill Conlogue tests the assumption that literature and local places matter less and less in a world that economists describe as “flat,” politicians believe has “globalized,” and social scientists imagine as a “global village.” Each chapter begins at home, journeys elsewhere, and returns to the author’s native and chosen region, northeastern Pennsylvania. Through the prisms of literature and history, the book explores tensions and conflicts within the region created by national and global demand for its resources: fertile farmland, forest products, anthracite coal, and college-educated young people. Making connections between local and global environmental issues, Here and There uses the Pennsylvania watersheds of urban Lackawanna and rural Lackawaxen to highlight the importance of understanding and protecting the places we call home.
Routledge International Handbook of Irish Studies begins with the reversal in Irish fortunes after the 2008 global economic crash. The chapters included address not only changes in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland but also changes in disciplinary approaches to Irish Studies that the last decade of political, economic, and cultural unrest have stimulated. Since 2008, Irish Studies has been directly and indirectly influenced by the crash and its reverberations through the economy, political landscape, and social framework of Ireland and beyond. Approaching Irish pasts, presents, and futures through interdisciplinary and theoretically capacious lenses, the chapters in this volume reflect the myriad wa...
This comprehensive, accessible introduction to one of Britain’s leading contemporary playwrights and filmmakers outlines Martin McDonagh’s body of work, the key critical contexts for understanding and exploring his career, analysis of productions, and includes an exclusive interview with the director of his most recent stage work. Analysis of McDonagh’s writing is broken down into three periods – his early Irish plays, his screenplays, and his later plays that move away from and outside of Ireland. Works are discussed thematically, giving a dynamic reading of the scripts and the ideas around which they circle. The book’s final section then delves in more detail into selected seminal productions of McDonagh’s writing, outlining key phases and transitions in his career. Part of the Routledge Modern and Contemporary Dramatists series, Martin McDonagh is an essential guide for scholars and students who are setting out to understand the life and work of one of the most popular and acclaimed British dramatists and filmmakers of the twenty-first century.