1. Write an essay on the role of the older Irish narratives in shaping the modern literature of Ireland , making reference to at least TWO texts on the module;
—or:
Write an essay on your favourite narrative in The Oxford Book of Irish Short Stories , illustrating your remarks about its method and its meaning in comparison with one other.

2. How far Gulliver’s Travels can be regarded as an example of Irish literature in English? That is to say, could it have been written had its author not known something of Irish culture?

3. ’When it comes to retelling Irish legends the writer faces an impossible task since no version that speaks to the reader today can possibly convey the force of the original.’ Discuss with detailed reference to at least TWO text by W. B. Yeats and/or Marie Heaney.

4. ’When the story-teller becomes a writer he also becomes a liar.’ Discuss this statement in relation to William Carleton, illustrating your remarks with specific reference to at least TWO of his stories.

5. ’The Anglo-Irish writer lives in a hyphenated world and his works profit by the double vision that this affords.’ What, in your view, are the Irish ingredients in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The Rivals and how does that play exemplify the Ango-Irish tradition?

6. Bram Stoker’s Dracula is not in any obvious sense an Irish novel, yet neither its central character nor its plot could have been imagined without an Irish background.’ Discuss.

7. ’Both George Moore and James Joyce repudiated traditional methods and values in their short stories, yet both were deeply traditional in their concerns and and intensely responsive to the special features of the Irish world in their ways of writing.’ Discuss.

8. ’Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds reprises the Irish Revival as a comedy.’ Discuss the parodic elements in the novel in the light of this statement.

9. What place does The Playboy of the Western World occupy in Irish literary tradition? In answering this question, give an estimate of Synge’s indebtedness to traditional Irish materials and his manner of transforming them.

10. The autobiographical novel is commonly the closest thing that we have to oral tradition in Ireland today.’ Discuss this remark in relation to Angela’s Ashes.