Irish Literature in Transition, 1940-1980: Volume 5

Description

This volume explores the history of Irish writing between the Second World War (or the 'Emergency') in 1939 and the re-emergence of violence in Northern Ireland in the 1970s. It situates modern Irish writing within the contexts of cultural transition and transnational connection, often challenging pre-existing perceptions of Irish literature in this period as stagnant and mundane. While taking into account the grip of Irish censorship and cultural nationalism during the mid-twentieth century, these essays identify an Irish literary culture stimulated by international political horizons and fully responsive to changes in publishing, readership, and education. The book combines valuable cultural surveys with focussed discussions of key literary moments, and of individual authors such as Sean O'Faolain, Samuel Beckett, Edna O'Brien, and John McGahern.

Eve Patten is Professor of English at Trinity College Dublin. She has published widely in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Irish and British literature. Her books include Samuel Ferguson and the Culture of Nineteenth-Century Ireland (2004), Imperial Refugee: Olivia Manning's Fictions of War (2012) and (co-edited with Aidan O'Malley) Ireland, West to East: Irish Cultural Connections with Central and Eastern Europe (2013). She is a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin and Deputy Director of the Trinity Long Room Hub for Arts and Humanities Research.

'... a remarkably ambitious project, taking the temperature of Irish literature from 1730 to the present in approximately 2,400 pages.' Anthony Roche, Irish Times 'The final essay of the collection, by Shaun Richards, is a very useful overview of the development of critical approaches and practices in the period. Irish Literature in Transition 1940-1980 is an expertly-edited collection of essays. The essays are lucid, insightful and jargon-free. For Irish Studies scholars of this period, it is indispensable.' Eoghan Smith, Irish Studies Review