The general topic of this course is Irish Literature in English - a cultural domain which was formerly known as Anglo-Irish Literature but has come to be recognised as autonomous in ways that a hyphenated name of that kind hardly conveys. Irish is Irish - whether the literature is in Irish or in English, or else in Hiberno-English - the dialect(s) of English spoken in Ireland. The study of Irish writing in English is a vital area of wider Irish Studies which incorporate history and sociology, culture and linguistics but also Diaspora studies which trace the legacy of a long Irish chronicle of migration (and, latterly, immigration). This remarkable body of writing arose from the turbulent history of an island nation on the Western edge of Europe which suffered the impact of a more powerful neighbour - England - and developed a method of cultural co-habitation and, in no small part, retaliation which resulted in some of the masterpieces of modern literature in the language of the colonial master.

That extraordinary transaction - which coincided with an independence movement that foreshadowed the break-up of the British Empire - was instilled with a constant spirit of resistance that found expression in an attempt to revive the native language (Irish) and the creation of a modern literature designed to reflect the distinct and separate consciousness of the Irish people from their colonial oppressors. (In practice, Ireland was largely, if unevenly, integrated in the United Kingdom and, for conservative observers, its separation seems as unnecessary as it was dangerous. Nevertheless, an Irish Republic did emerge from the guerrilla war conducted during 1919-1922 resulted in the creation of a modern national state with United Nations membership and, latterly, membership of the European Union. The history of that struggle and the nature of the new state are unavoidable strands in the narrative associated with the literary history of the island and are therefore part of the wider context dealt with in this course.

As far as possible all our classroom meetings will be divided between Lectures and Practicals, allowing for the nature of the material in hand at any time. In the first half (3 & 4 in the UFRN horário), classes will be conducted in the form of a talk (if not lecture) on the part of the teacher. In the second half (4 & 5 in SIGAA), attention will be given to textual reading, student summaries and responses and the discussion of the questions raised by all of these. Evaluation elements will be incorporated in any formal student presentations - meaning work invited or required in advance of the meeting - to be combined with Unit Tests mandated by the University system. The assignment of dates and topics on the Course Plan may vary according to interest, progress, or different amounts of time required for the proper treatment of each topic. I also reserve the right to vary the list of writers treated at any point. Contact me anytime at bstewart@ricorso.net.

As far as possible all Weeks will be divided between Lectures and Practicals, allowing for the nature of the material in hand at any time. In the first half (periods 3 & 4 in the UFRN horario), Weekes will be conducted in the form of transmitted information by the teacher. In other words, the teacher will talk. In the second (periods 4 & 5), the time will be largely occupied with critical work on specific texts involving the maximum of participation on the part of students. Evaluation will be  project-based for Units 1 & 2 and test-based for Unit 3. In 1 & 2, for example, each student – working either singly or in pairs and groups – might take a task such as ‘biographical report’, ‘historical context’, ‘description of form’, ‘listing of vocabulary’, or ‘commentary on poem’, the mark to be arrived at by the consensus of the Week. The allotment of dates and topics may vary according to progress made or varying levels of work involved in the proper treatment of each and I reserve the right to vary the list of writers treated at any point.

The texts and materials required for reading and response in class are given each week on the SIGAA pages for this disciplina. A wider selection of materials is available here on the LEM2055: Irish Literature webpages in RICORSO Classroom, and students are invited to browse these more extensive records if they wish. The classroom materials present on SIGAA are also given here and duly marked - but the copies may differ slightly in respect of editing and presentation since simultaneous emendations in both context is often too inconvenient to attempt. (The hope is to eliminate all errors of information or language on both ‘sites’ as the course progresses and any suggestions made by students will be gratefully received. Many of the texts in both contexts are supplied in Word only - usually in .doc versions but also increasingly in docx compatible with Windows 10 & 11. Others are given in .pdf only and some in both. If a file is made available in Word it will download automatically to any folder (pasta) that you choose. A Word file can promptly be converted to PDF by saving with to that format within Word. A PDF file cannot so easily be returned to Word formats - but this can be done using editing versions of Adobe PDF or another proprietary PDF editor such as Wondershare, which I myself use. On questions of copyright relating to all and any of the materials in RICORSO Classroom I take the broad line that they would not be freely available on internet if their use was prohibited for teaching purposes. No profit arises from any part of the RICORSO website and it cannot therefore be said to capitalise on digital technology at the expense of writers. In practice, however, the copyright of the vast majority of the writers covered in RICORSO and many of the critics is extinct. It remains to say that a not negligible amount of work and skill is involved in successfully building useful webpages and this is not without expense in terms of machinery and licences and, finally, it constitutes something of a career choice in the sense that creative writing is more readily accessible to those who are not labouring in the vineyard of archival hoarding as the deviser and editor of RICORSO sadly is. [BS 05.04.2023.]

Authors/ Works

Historical Events

Cultural Forms

The Irish Mythological Sagas

Gaelic Invasion, c.400 b.c.

Paganism and Christianity

Saint Patrick (Confessio)

Arrival of Christianity

Gaelic Literature (Selected Poems)

Flight of the Earls, 1603

Anglo-Irish Ascendency

Jonathan Swift (Modest Proposal)

Battle of the Boyne, 1690

Marie Edgeworth (Castle Rackrent)

The Act of Union, 1800

Thomas Moore and Wm. Carleton

Catholic Emancipation, 1829

Rise of Irish Nationalism

Gothic Ireland (Le Fanu & Stoker)

Home Rule Bill

W. B. Yeats (selected poems)

Death of Parnell, 1891

Irish Literary Revival

Synge & O’Casey (sel. passages)

Easter Rising, 1916

James Joyce (Ulysses)

Independence, 1922

Catholic Triumphalism

Samuel Beckett (Godot & Trilogy)

Worlds at War

Literary Modernism

Flann O’Brien (Third Policeman)

“The Emergency”

Cultural Isolationism

Seamus Heaney (Seeing Things)

The Troubles (NI), 1969

EU membership

Patrick McCabe (The Butcher Boy)

European Union, 1972

Social Criticism

Sebastian Barry (Secret Scripture)

“Magdalen Laundries”

Revisionism