A History of Irish Modernism

This book attests to the unique development of modernism in Ireland - driven by political as well as artistic concerns.

Gregory Castle (Edited by), Patrick Bixby (Edited by)

9781107176720, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 24 January 2019

442 pages, 10 b/w illus.
23.5 x 15.9 x 2.8 cm, 0.76 kg

'… provides a helpful template with which to address the various artists and movements covered in the rest of the book … the book achieves its goal through the course of its twenty three chapters and should be regarded as a serious collection.' Feargal Whelan, Estudios Irlandeses

A History of Irish Modernism examines a wide variety of artworks (from the 1890s to the 1970s), including examples from literature, film, painting, music, radio, and architecture. Each chapter considers a particular aspect of Irish culture and reflects on its contribution to modernism at large. In addition to new research on the Irish Revival and cultural nationalism, which places them squarely in the modernist arena, chapters offer transnational and transdisciplinary perspectives that place Irish cultural production in new contexts. At the same time, the historical standpoint adopted in each chapter enables the contributors to examine how modernist practices developed across geographical and temporal distances. A History of Irish Modernism thus attests to the unique development of modernism in Ireland - driven by political as well as artistic concerns - even as it embodies aesthetic principles that are the hallmark of modernism in Europe, the Americas and beyond.

Introduction: Irish modernism, from emergence to emergency Gregory Castle and Patrick Bixby
Part I. Revivals: 1. Gothic revivals: the Fin De Siècle, Irish modernism, and the heritage of Wilde and Stoker John Paul Riquelme
2. Standish O'Grady and the historical imagination of Irish modernism Gregory Castle and Patrick Bixby
3. Yeats, the Abbey and theatrical modernism Christopher Morash
4. J. M. Synge: late Romantic or proto-modernist? Nicholas Grene
5. Internal others: cultural debate and counter-revival Ronan McDonald
Part II. Revolutions: 6. Naturalism and the literary politics of Irish modernist fiction Simon Joyce
7. Towards a modernism of the book: from Dun Emer to Shakespeare and Company Clare Hutton
8. Rebellious devotion: Catholicism and the limits of modernism Michael Cronin
9. Irish modernism: the European influence Enda Duffy
10. Yeats and the revolutionary poetics of age Michael Wood
11. Material modernism: an Irish case, circa 1921 Nicholas Allen
Part III. New States: 12. From Whiteboys to white nationalism: Joyce and Irish populism Joseph Valente
13. Sean O'Casey's late modernism: gender, race, and disabled bodies on the Irish expressionist stage Paige Reynolds
14. Feeling disaffection: forms of estrangement in Irish fiction Derek Hand
15. Atlantic archipelagos: the Irish American ecologies of late modernism John Brannigan
16. A disruptive modernist: Kate O'Brien and Irish women's writing Gerardine Meaney
17. After Yeats: local, regional, and transatlantic modernisms Adrienne Leavy
Part IV. Emergenc(i)es: 18. Irish writing and minor language modernism Barry McCrea
19. Time made audible: Irish stations and radio modernism Damien Keane
20. 'No Irishness intended': the Irish Exhibition of Living Art, Thomas MacGreevy, and Samuel Beckett Luke Gibbons
21. Was The Bell modernist? Frank Shovlin
22. Samuel Beckett, late modernism, and the paradox of distance Emilie Morin
23. 1966: the binary conditions of Irish architectural modernism Ellen Rowley.

Subject Areas: Literary reference works [DSR], Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH], Literature: history & criticism [DS]