Small World
Ireland, 1798–2018

A survey of 200 years of Irish writing, this book offers analytic accounts of key Irish works and authors.

Seamus Deane (Author), Joe Cleary (Foreword by)

9781108840866, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 27 May 2021

364 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.7 cm, 0.68 kg

'Joe Cleary has done the world a great service with this book. He persuaded Seamus Deane to publish a collection of new and old essays, some of which date from the1970s and 1980s, and he guided the selection and arrangement of the contents.' James Chandler, Critical Inquiry

Seamus Deane was one of the most vital and versatile authors of our time. Small World presents an unmatched survey of Irish writing, and of writing about Irish issues, from 1798 to the present day. Elegant, polemical, and incisive, it addresses the political, aesthetic, and cultural dimensions of several notable literary and historical moments, and monuments, from the island's past and present. The style of Swift; the continuing influence of Edmund Burke's political thought in the USA; the echoing debates about national character; aspects of Joyce's and of Elizabeth Bowen's relation to modernism; memories of Seamus Heaney; analysis of the representation of Northern Ireland in Anna Burns's fiction – these topics constitute only a partial list of the themes addressed by a volume that should be mandatory reading for all those who care about Ireland and its history. The writings included here, from one of Irish literature's most renowned critics, have individually had a piercing impact, but they are now collectively amplified by being gathered together here for the first time between one set of covers. Small World: Ireland, 1798–2018 is an indispensable collection from one of the most important voices in Irish literature and culture.

Foreword, Joe Cleary
1. Swift as Classic
2. Burke in the USA
3. Tone: The Great Nation and the Evil Empire
4. Imperialism and Nationalism
5. Irish National Character 1790–1900
6. Civilians and Barbarians
7. Heroic Styles: The Tradition of an Idea
8. Ulysses: The Exhaustion of Literature and the Literature of Exhaustion
9. Dead Ends: Joyce's Finest Moments
10. Elizabeth Bowen: Sentenced to Death: The House in Paris
11. Elizabeth Bowen: Two Stories in One
12. Mary Lavin: Celibates
13. Emergency Aesthetics
14. Wherever Green is Read
15. The Famous Seamus
16. The End of the World.

Subject Areas: British & Irish history [HBJD1], Literary reference works [DSR], Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK], Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH], Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 [DSBF], Literary theory [DSA]