Twentieth-Century Irish Literature

This Guide surveys existing criticism and theory and enables students to understand the key critical debates, paradigms and predominant themes and issues in relation to a wide variety of Irish poets, playwrights and novelists. It helps the reader to relate Irish literature and criticism to debates surrounding such issues as national identity and nationalism, modernity and the Revival period, armed stuggle, gender and sexuality, postcolonialism and the development of Irish studies.

AARON KELLY is Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature at the University of Edinburgh, UK.

Introduction * Reviving Irishness: The Irish Literary Revival * Revising Irishness: Contesting the Nation in the Revival and its Legacies * Gender, Feminism, Sexuality * Contemporary Literature and the Irish Republic * Contemporary Literature and Northern Ireland * Ireland in Theory: Postcolonialism, Postmodernism and Irish Studies Today * Conclusion * Notes * Select Bibliography * Index *