ENG 331: Studies in Irish Literature

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This course studies Irish writing and culture, including the Irish revival, Irish modernism, and writing of the Irish diaspora. It will concentrate specifically on Irish writing and culture produced between 1922 and 1972, the fifty years roughly between the end of one period of intense violence and the beginning of another. In the aftermath of the tremendous outpouring of literary energy that accompanied the political struggles for Irish self-determination and independence in the first decades of the twentieth century, Irish writing has been conventionally held to have diverged along two separate paths: one that continues with experimentally modernist and progressively internationalist forms; and another that turns its back on modernism and instead reverts to a stagnant, insular naturalism. Through our reading for this course, we will question this characterization of Irish writing after 1922, with special attention to the kinds of social critique that are enabled and forestalled by each of these broad modes of writing. The readings for this course include prose fiction (novels and short stories), poetry, drama, autobiography, and non-literary forms.

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Department

English