Irish Literature in Transition: 1980–2020: Volume 6

A volume of early critical intervention into the features of contemporary Irish and Northern Irish authors, writing, and cultural practice.

Eric Falci (Edited by), Paige Reynolds (Edited by)

9781108474047, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 12 March 2020

448 pages
23.6 x 15.9 x 2.9 cm, 0.75 kg

'These reckonings acutely register the 'future's productively uncertain relation to the present world', as Falci writes of Boland and Heaney, and establishes the strengths and challenges of Irish Studies within this unpredictable present.' Liam Harisson, Irish Studies Review

Irish Literature in Transition, 1980–2020 elucidates the central features of Irish literature during the twentieth century's long turn, covering its significant trends and formations, reassessing its major writers and texts, and providing path-making accounts of its emergent figures. Over the past forty years, life in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland has been transformed by new material conditions in each polity and by ideological shifts in the way people understand themselves and their relation to the world. Amid these remarkable changes, culture on both sides of the border has emerged as a global phenomenon, one that both reflects and intervenes in rapidly changing contemporary conditions. This volume accounts for broad patterns of literary and cultural production in this period and demonstrates the value of Irish contemporary literature within anglophone and European traditions and as a body of work that has kept its eye trained on the particularities of the island and its inhabitants.

Introduction Eric Falci and Paige Reynolds
Part I. Times: 1. The contemporary conditions of Irish language literature Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh
2. The cultures of poetry in contemporary Ireland David Lloyd
3. Troubles literature and the end of the troubles Julia Obert
4. Contemporary Irish theatre and media Paige Reynolds
5. Writing childhood: young adult and children's literature Patricia Kennon
Coda: Eavan Boland and Seamus Heaney Eric Falci
Part II. Spaces: 6. Habitations: space, place, real estate Adam Hanna
7. Crossings: Northern Irish literature from Good Friday to Brexit Stefanie Lehner
8. Adaptations: commemoration and contemporary Irish theatre James Moran
9. Relocations: diaspora, travel, migrancy Ellen McWilliams
10. Arrivals: inward migration and Irish literature Anne Mulhall
Coda: Tom Murphy and Brian Friel Patrick Lonergan
Part III. Forms of Experience: 11. The Irish realist novel Joe Cleary
12. Faith, secularism, and sacred institutions Diarmaid Ferriter
13. Writing the tiger: economics and culture Sarah Townsend
14. Violence, trauma, recovery Christopher Langlois
15. Modes of witnessing and Ireland's institutional history Emilie Pine, Susan Leavy, Mark Keane, Maeve Casserly and Tom Lane
Coda: Edna O'Brien and Eimear McBride Clair Wills
Part IV. Practices, Institutions, and Audiences: 16. Mediation and translation in Irish language literature Rióna Ní Fhrighil
17. Irish studies and its discontents Ronan McDonald
18. Historical transitions in Ireland on screen Barry Monahan
19. Irish blockbusters and literary stars at the end of the millenium Stephen Watt
20. Contemporary literature and public value Margaret Kelleher
Coda: The Irish Times, Tramp Press, and the future present Paige Reynolds.

Subject Areas: British & Irish history [HBJD1], Literary reference works [DSR], Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH], Literary studies: general [DSB], Literature & literary studies [D]