Ireland's Immortals

Ireland's Immortals
Author: Mark Williams
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 608
Release: 2018-12-04
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 069118304X

A sweeping history of Ireland's native gods, from Iron Age cult and medieval saga to the Celtic Revival and contemporary fiction Ireland’s Immortals tells the story of one of the world’s great mythologies. The first account of the gods of Irish myth to take in the whole sweep of Irish literature in both the nation’s languages, the book describes how Ireland’s pagan divinities were transformed into literary characters in the medieval Christian era—and how they were recast again during the Celtic Revival of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A lively narrative of supernatural beings and their fascinating and sometimes bizarre stories, Mark Williams’s comprehensive history traces how these gods—known as the Túatha Dé Danann—have shifted shape across the centuries. We meet the Morrígan, crow goddess of battle; the fire goddess Brigit, who moonlights as a Christian saint; the fairies who inspired J.R.R. Tolkien’s elves; and many others. Ireland’s Immortals illuminates why these mythical beings have loomed so large in the world’s imagination for so long.

Classical Presences in Irish Poetry after 1960

Classical Presences in Irish Poetry after 1960
Author: Florence Impens
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2018-01-02
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3319682318

This book provides the first overview of classical presences in Anglophone Irish poetry after 1960. Featuring detailed studies of Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, Derek Mahon, and Eavan Boland, including close readings of key poems, it highlights the evolution of Irish poetic engagements with Greece and Rome in the last sixty years. It outlines the contours of a ‘movement’ which has transformed Irish poetry and accompanied its transition from a postcolonial to a transnational model, from sporadic borrowings of images and myths in the poets’ early attempts to define their own voices, to the multiplication of classical adaptations since the late 1980s -- at first at a time of personal and political crises, notably in Northern Ireland, and more recently, as manifestations of the poets’ engagements with European and other foreign literatures.

Ireland, Enlightenment and the English Stage, 1740-1820

Ireland, Enlightenment and the English Stage, 1740-1820
Author: David O'Shaughnessy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2019-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108498140

Reveals the contribution of Irish writers to the Georgian English stage; argues that theatre is an important strand of the Irish Enlightenment.

Reading Postwar British and Irish Poetry

Reading Postwar British and Irish Poetry
Author: Michael Thurston
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2013-11-05
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1118619811

Combining detailed explorations of both mainstream and experimental poets with a clear historical and literary overview, Reading Postwar British and Irish Poetry offers readers at all levels an ideal guide to the rich body of poetic works published in Britain and Ireland over the last half-century. Features detailed discussions of individual poems that are widely available in anthologies and selected poems volumes Pays explicit attention to how to read the poems, focusing on language and form and the institutional conditions of literary possibility in which poets worked Includes poets of all types and styles from throughout the post-war period, including canonical and mainstream poets alongside experimental poets, women, and poets of color