Search

This article discusses the application of Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy to literature, specifically the works of John Banville. It explores the concept of "virtuous egoism" in Nietzsche's philosophy and suggests that characters in Banville's novels embody this idea. The article also examines the theme of death in Banville's works and its connection to ethics and optimism. The document accompanying the article is a list of references and sources related to Nietzsche's philosophy, including translations of his work and books analyzing his ideas. These resources would be valuable for library patrons researching Nietzsche and his philosophy. [Extracted from the article]

One hundred years after the publication of Ulysses (1922), the novel that would immortalize James Joyce, his ouvre continues to attract readers, intellectuals and artists as much as his private life still fascinates Joyceans, writers and a general public. The present contribution analyses three recent additions to the so-called 'Joyce industry', studying a series of fictional texts that feature the allegedly inexhaustible topic of the Irish writer's complex relationship with women. Annabel Abbs's The Joyce Girl (2016), Nuala O'Connor's Nora (2021) and Kerri Maher's The Paris Bookseller (2022) are the focus of the present contribution, three biofictions of, respectively, Joyce's daughter, his wife Nora and of Sylvia Beach, the woman who published Ulysses in book form. It is our intention to assess the extent to which these narratives offer a retrieval of three women's stories, to study them in the context of recent vindications of biofiction as a subgenre that must be distinguished from both biography and historical fiction and, above all, to account for the undeniable interest and even popularity of women related to Joyce among Joycean scholars but also among average readers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecofascism is an ideology that attempts to ground the fascist political project on a strongly 'natural' basis. Whilst still inchoate and not yet a mainstream political movement, it is an increasingly influential ideology in far-right circles, motivating a number of acts of political violence. This article uses Australian author David Ireland's last novel The World Repair Video Game to explore the structure and constituent elements of ecofascist ideology, and how this is manifested spatially in the literary world of the novel. Using a structural Marxist understanding of literature as a fashioning of ideology, the article argues that, through aesthetic means, Ireland is able to project an ecofascist future that runs ahead of its material reality. In so doing, Ireland plots how a future ecofascism might synergise an essentialist link between the natural and social worlds, hatred towards those who resist the neoliberal link between labour and human worth, extreme violence and a deep, genuine nature worship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article, "Narratives of the Unspoken in Contemporary Irish Fiction: Silences that Speak," explores the theme of silence in Irish literature. The collection of essays, edited by Maria Teresa Caneda-Cabrera and José Carregal-Romero, examines how silence is embedded in language, culture, society, and institutions. The essays cover various well-known Irish authors and analyze the role of silence in historical novels, aesthetics, gender, shame, and the cultural shift post-Celtic Tiger. The book offers a profound exploration of silence as a powerful force shaping Irish identity and narratives, inviting readers to contemplate its significance in actions, beliefs, and erasures. [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of ABEI Journal: The Brazilian Journal of Irish Studies is the property of Associacao Brasileira de Estudos Irlandeses and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of ABEI Journal: The Brazilian Journal of Irish Studies is the property of Associacao Brasileira de Estudos Irlandeses and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of ABEI Journal: The Brazilian Journal of Irish Studies is the property of Associacao Brasileira de Estudos Irlandeses and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of ABEI Journal: The Brazilian Journal of Irish Studies is the property of Associacao Brasileira de Estudos Irlandeses and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This essay investigates the literary exchanges between the Irish poet and agronomist George William Tighe and Percy Bysshe Shelley in Pisa, where the former lived with Margaret King Mount Cashell, alias 'Mrs Mason', a radical Irish writer and former pupil of Mary Wollstonecraft. After moving to Pisa in 1820, Shelley began daily visits to the Mason-Tighe household, sourcing from Tighe's library a wealth of reading material on agricultural chemistry and botany, alongside Irish political and historical titles. Tighe's previously unexamined papers showcase his interests in Irish and Italian literature, republicanism, botany, and agriculture and reveal his links with the Lunar Society of Birmingham. Taking as a case study the first poem Shelley composed in Pisa, I argue that Tighe's agricultural pursuits shaped Shelley's political and botanical imagination in 'The Sensitive-Plant' and exerted a significant influence on Shelley's later poetry as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims at examining how systemic violence is connected with social stigma and structural vulnerability in the social novel The Spinning Heart, which was published by the Irish writer Donal Ryan in 2012. This much lauded work describes the collapse of the Celtic Tiger and its devastating effects in a small rural town in Ireland from multiple viewpoints. Although there are twenty-one first-person narrators, one per chapter, Bobby Mahon stands out among them. In fact, the story of this construction foreman connects with the trajectories presented by the other characters. Through all of them, Ryan denounces the practices and procedures that powerful and privileged institutions, groups and individuals resort to in contemporary Ireland in order to assert control or authority over other less favoured members of society, thus fostering a climate of violence. Attention is drawn in this article to the nature of the patterns of aggression and hostility developed by the main characters in the novel but also to the adverse impact these unjust, oppressive and stigmatising patterns have on vulnerable subjects by burdening them physically, psychologically, culturally and financially. Michael Staudigl’s theories on systemic violence in Phenomenologies of Violence (2014), Imogen Tyler’s notions on social stigma in Stigma. The Machinery of Inequality (2020), Judith Butler’s ideas on structural vulnerability in Vulnerability in Resistance (2016) and Pierre Bourdieu’s views on patriarchy in Masculine Domination (2001) inform this work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deirdre Sullivan is an award-winning Irish YA writer who has been praised by several writers and folklore academics, such as Jack Zipes, for her fairy-tale revisions and her rewriting of the Irish legend “The Children of Lir”. Following the steps of contemporary feminist writers like Angela Carter or Emma Donoghue, Sullivan gives voice to minorities and deals with silenced topics such as sexual harassment. This interview focuses on her subversions of fairy tales and Irish mythology, especially in her collection Tangleweed and Brine (2017) and her revision of “The Children of Lir” in Savage Her Reply (2020). In this interview, Deirdre Sullivan talks about her interest in fairy tales and Irish folklore and how she became a writer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay was prompted by a review by the Scottish poet, Robert Crawford, of Clare Bucknell’s recent book, The Treasuries: Poetry Anthologies and the Making of British Culture (2023). It provides a reading of Bucknell’s book in the light of other anthologies. So it is not in itself a review but, rather, a series of reflections on the construction and nature of anthologies stimulated by my reading of Bucknell’s book. Crawford insists on the omissions in Bucknell’s account from a Scottish perspective. But I want to take in a wider perspective, one that includes national identity. Initially, I focus on the index and on the entry for Palgrave’s father and his Jewish name. This leads to a discussion on the authoritative appearance of The Golden Treasury and perhaps on what it is hiding. The essay takes issue with the partial view of English poetry, where Wordsworth is afforded the most poems, and eighteenth-century poets hardly feature. The second half discusses Bucknell’s chapter on the popularity of poetry therapy and her omission of any discussion of recent women’s poetry. The anthology she dismisses out of hand is Yeats’s The Oxford Book of Modern Verse 1892-1935. Such a conclusion invites a response at some length. The focus then shifts to another Irish writer, William Allingham, and his largely forgotten anthology, Nightingale Valley, which was published the year before The Golden Treasury and which Palgrave sought to better. In his thought-provoking choices, which includes possibly the first printing of Blake’s poems in an anthology, Allingham provides a counter to those who read poetry and literature simply in terms of the way they reflect history. In doing so he affords a valuable critique of The Treasuries and The Golden Treasury from over a century and a half ago. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although most well-known for his plays and prose, the Irish writer Brendan Behan also recorded a number of songs, some of his own composition and others either traditional or written by contemporaries. His best-known recording, Brendan Behan Sings Irish Folk Songs and Ballads, remarkably captures not only his voice, but also his wit and distinct joie de vivre. The collection from 1960 includes not only the songs themselves (with Behan still in fine singing form), but also his introductions and wry comments on a range of subjects. The article looks at the circumstances behind the recording, the actual songs included on the album, and Behan’s ongoing commentary about a range of topics. The focus is on the first half of the recording which consists of songs from his play The Hostage, with an additional short discussion of one of his most well-known pieces, “The Auld Triangle,” which serves as an ongoing leitmotif in his earlier play, The Quare Fellow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Signa is the property of Editorial UNED and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article focuses on Anthony Trollope's formative years in Ireland, highlighting how the country profoundly shaped his identity as a writer. It delves into Trollope's literary journey, from his early unsuccessful novels set in Ireland to his evolving engagement with Irish themes, shedding light on his ambivalent yet influential portrayal of the country's political and societal landscape.

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

A popular author in Italy since the late 1990s, Irish writer Catherine Dunne, like Elena Ferrante, has engaged with topics of female emancipation, resistance to patriarchal values, and the mother-daughter relationship, among others. The popular and critical acclaim Dunne's narrative has received in Italy — with her debut novel predating Ferrante's The Days of Abandonment (2002) and her subsequent work anticipating many Ferrantean themes — begs for a thorough comparative appraisal of these two authors' oeuvres. In this article, Ferrara first shows how Dunne's debut novel In the Beginning and her second novel A Name for Himself anticipate important themes and tropes explored by Ferrante in her narrative, including the concept of smarginatura or dissolving margins. Secondly, Ferrara identifies the central place that grief and grievability play in both authors' non-anthropocentric, anti-patriarchal poetics and in the construction of their female subjects. Through the lens of trauma studies and posthumanist theory, the paper reveals how Dunne and Ferrante's characters overcome abandonment and loss through a productive interconnection with nonhuman objects and entities that are signifiers of grief, such as photographs, dolls and stuffed animals. The analysis concludes with a comparative case-study of Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels (2011–2014) and Dunne's The Years that Followed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seamus Mac Mathuna's book, "Ireland and the Immrama: An Enquiry into Irish Influence on Old Norse-Icelandic Voyage Literature," fills a gap in the study of immrama, or sea-voyages, in early Irish literature. The book consists of an introduction, six chapters, a conclusion, and a bibliography, providing a comprehensive analysis of the subject. Mac Mathuna explores the connections between Irish and Icelandic literature, examining the influence of Irish stories on Icelandic tales such as Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns and Snorri Sturluson's Gylfaginning. He also considers the influence of Classical and Christian literature on the narrative motifs and patterns found in Icelandic fornaldarsögur. [Extracted from the article]

An introduction is presented in which editor discusses various articles within the issues on topics including examination of the representation of otherness in some crime fiction; problematic Orientalist tendency in Irish writers and imperishability of neoliberalism and the global economic system.

The Eger Journal of English Studies has published a review of the book "English Literature and its Hungarian Reception," which is part of a larger project to synthesize the history of English literature for the Hungarian public. The book covers the period from the 1640s to the 1830s and includes an analysis of various literary works and lesser-known figures from that time. The review notes that the book is well-coordinated and provides a smooth reading experience, with extensive cross-references and a detailed index. However, it also mentions a slight bias towards poetry in the book, with less focus on prose and novels. The study aims to challenge traditional categorizations and expand the literary canon by including Scottish, Irish, and female authors. It also explores the development of genres beyond traditional literature, such as diaries, letters, and scientific works. The book provides valuable insights into the historical, social, and artistic context of the period and is recommended for university students and interested readers. [Extracted from the article]

This article sets out to map the largely forgotten history of the first television dramas about Northern Ireland by Northern Ireland writers during the 1950s and 1960s. It examines the first experiments in drama production by BBC Northern Ireland and Ulster Television alongside the work by Northern Irish writers produced by ITV companies and the BBC in London. It looks at the institutional and ideological contexts in which the work emerged before going on to examine the patterns of representation that resulted. Made prior to the emergence of the Troubles in 1969, the article considers the first attempts to show Northern Ireland in television drama and assesses the ways in which the individual plays – ranging from rural comedy to working-class realism – addressed – both obliquely and explicitly – the social tensions and anxieties of the time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article charts world-making and home-formation as two connectors between Irish and Indian literature on their way toward becoming world literature. Home and world are conceptualized as flows while the idea of the path is seen as a synthetic bridge between them. The first part examines how Irish literature becomes world literature by studying two temporal encounters between Irish and Indian writers, between W.B. Yeats and Rabindranath Tagore and between Colm Tóibín and Amit Chaudhuri. The second part shifts from temporality to spatiality in a discussion of global modernisms that reads Tagore's 1922 Lipika text on the path in relation to T.S. Eliot's modernist imagination of tradition and the individual talent. The two parts of the article coalesce around the triad of home, world and path by envisaging the turn of world literature with a renewed focus on the universal and the ontological oneness of literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The book "Science, Technology, and Irish Modernism" challenges the misconception that Irish writers, such as W.B. Yeats, had little interest in science and technology. The editors explore the relationship between Irish modernism and emerging sciences and technologies in the early twentieth century. The book examines how Irish Revivalists aimed to reconcile religious and scientific experiences, the impact of everyday life and media technologies during the 1916 Easter Rising, the influence of technological concepts on James Joyce, the intersection of medicine and literature in Joyce's "Ulysses," and the incorporation of new physics by Yeats, Beckett, and John Banville. The book highlights the intellectual richness of Irish modernist thought and encourages interdisciplinary studies. [Extracted from the article]

"The Political Thought of the Irish Revolution" is a book that focuses on the political ideas and writings of key figures during the Irish Revolution. It includes extracts from thirty-one texts, ranging from book-length studies to short essays and speeches. The book features prominent nationalist thinkers and leaders such as John Redmond, Eoin MacNeill, and Patrick Pearse, as well as socialist republican James Connolly. It also includes extracts from British and Irish Unionist writers. The introduction by Richard Bourke, the editor, discusses the character of the conflict and highlights the centrality of democratic nationalism in Irish politics. However, some critics argue that the introduction oversimplifies the complexities of Irish political conflict. Overall, the book provides a valuable resource for understanding the political thought of the Irish Revolution. [Extracted from the article]

An introduction is presented in which the author explores the articles in the issue on topics including celebration of Irish writing, Christianity in Irish literature and engagement of Irish authors with Catholicism.

Copyright of ABEI Journal: The Brazilian Journal of Irish Studies is the property of Associacao Brasileira de Estudos Irlandeses and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Most of these scholars remained agnostic regarding Landon's personal life or followed Blanchard and Landon herself in arguing that she was the victim of unfounded press rumour and innuendo. Some years ago, I acquired a copy of Laman Blanchard's 1841 I Life and Literary Remains of L.E.L. i at a book sale in Aotearoa New Zealand. Too often, Miller uses the passive voice to describe Landon, emptying out her agency: 'By 1825 she had become so involved in the day-to-day running of the I Gazette i that Jerdan later described her in his autobiography as his effective coeditor, although her role was never formally acknowledged. [Extracted from the article]

Red Riding Hood is a story that has been retold and reimagined more frequently than most. Where the oral tradition often celebrated Red's sexuality and cunning, literary versions transform the tale into one in which a young girl is blamed for her own rape – or, in many feminist versions, where she fights back. Drawing on discussions with writers and feminist activists in Uganda, and on work by Ugandan and Irish writers and scholars, I explore how this troubling and ambiguous story can be used to facilitate communication across difference and culturally situated solidarities. I present a retelling of Red Riding Hood from an Irish perspective, using this as a springboard to explore parallels and disjunctures between Irish and Ugandan storytelling traditions and perspectives on women's rights and sexuality. I explore the potential of using this well-known European story to surface and contest dominant framings of women's rights, and as a contact point to enable dialogue between more peripheral European (Irish) and Ugandan (Kiganda and Soga) cultural traditions, facilitating mutual recognition, while remaining aware of and explicitly surfacing differences between these traditions. Telling and retelling ambiguous stories like Red Riding Hood can create space to consider where we come from and what we desire, and how those desires might be engaged through or might influence relationships of solidarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the Irish writers who have constructed fiction set in Africa, the works of none have been lauded more highly than those of Gerald Hanley (1916- 1992). However, they have been subjected to very little published scholarly analysis. The present article discusses his first and arguably best novel, The Consul at Sunset, which was issued in 1951. It is argued that the unambiguously anti-imperialist stance of this novel counters prevailing notions in colonial discourse theory, which has suggested inter alia that either consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly, European writing about Africa has lent rhetorical support to the establishment and continuation of European hegemony over that continent and its peoples, and that it has tended to juxtapose colonising and colonised peoples in Manichean categories. Hanley’s galleries of British and African characters in the Horn of Africa are both too complex and contain too many nuances to be fitted into such a rhetorical framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I will examine aspects of the work of the Irish writer Brian Dillon which allow us to propose the continuing relevance, from an Irish perspective, of a strain of critical discourse which engages with the legacy of the Enlightenment. Specifically, I look primarily at Dillon's 2014 essay collection Objects in This Mirror as well as his 2017 collection Essayism, with a view to establishing some key characteristics of his artistic project, while showing their compatibility with the cultural materialism of key scholars of the Frankfurt School, before finally making explicit the compatibility of Dillon's work with the values which underpin the Irish Field Day project which has influenced Irish studies since the 1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Northern Irish author Jan Carson was invited writer at the 20th International Conference of the Spanish Association for Irish Studies (AEDEI), organized by the Universidad de Burgos in 2022. There, she kindly talked about herself as a writer, about the intricacies of her creative work, and about the sensitive issues underlying the plot of The Raptures, her last novel. Violence, religion, rurality and death, are filtered through Hannah’s eyes, a young girl for whom reality and magic mingle inextricably. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on Irish writer, playwright and television screenwriter Eugene McCabe’s fictional representation of the Northern Irish ‘Troubles’ in his trilogy Victims, published in the collection Heaven Lies about Us (2005). Living most of his life on his family farm on the Monaghan/Fermanagh border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, McCabe had a deep understanding of the historically entrenched hatreds, bigotry and fundamentalisms of its inhabitants, and his fiction reflects the human tragedy underlying the violence. This paper draws on an eco-philosophical framework to suggest that by capturing the entanglement between the natural and cultural place-world McCabe’s poetics offers, from a liberal humanist perspective, an indictment of anthropocentric patriarchy at the root of violent dispute. McCabe’s literary world, evoking natural and cultural landscapes, encapsulates the absurdity of isolating territories via false political borders, marginalizing the value of bioregion and diversity and ignoring the vital oneness of humanity. Thus, though McCabe’s short stories are indeed culturally and politically specific, in shedding light on the self-destructiveness of human behaviour they are ultimately timeless and universal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the diverse manifestations of a lifelong interest in Ireland in the work of the Scottish Gaelic poet, scholar, and activist Ruaraidh MacThòmais (Derick Thomson, 1921-2012). It touches upon Thomson’s academic engagement with Irish-related topics and follows his comments on the situation of the Irish language and revitalisation efforts in his “manifesto” essay “The Role of the Writer in a Minority Culture” (1966) and other articles, where it serves as a source of inspiration and a point of contrast. Detailed attention is paid to the generous space which was devoted to Irish affairs and literature in the Gaelic quarterly magazine Gairm which Thomson cofounded and steered for fifty years (1952-2002), including his reviews of Irish-related publications. Drawing on references in Gairm and in Thomson’s poetry collections, the essay also brings together evidence of his personal contacts with Irish writers and intellectuals, including Máirtín Ó Direáin, and of his sustained engagement with W.B. Yeats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Epos is the property of Editorial UNED and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Studia Litteraria Universitatis Iagellonicae is the property of Jagiellonian University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)