DOCSLIB.ORG

The Irish Literary Tradition from the Tain to Toibin

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Irish Literary Tradition from the Tain to Toibin Literature The Irish Literary Tradition from The Tain to Toibin Faculty: Ms. Barbara J. Burch - Georgetown College Professor English Course: Credit Hours: 3 Course Levels Offered: Lower Division (100-200 Level) or Upper Division (300-400 Level) Can this course be taken to fulfill major and minor requirements? YES Can this course be taken to fulfill general elective credit? YES Local Course Designator at Georgetown College: English 196 English 458 Prerequisites: Students who take the lower level course should have completed their college's basic writing requirement. Students who take the upper level course should have a completed a survey or Intro to Literature course. Description: Ireland is a small country with an outsized literary tradition. This course is designed to bring the genius, value and profound fun of that tradition into focus. We will read "greatest hits" of Irish Literature, starting with the tragi-comic exploits of Cuchulain in The Tain Bo Culaigne and moving on to important works by Swift, yeats, Synge and several contemporary authors, particularly Toibin. Visits to sites like the James Joyce Museum at Sandy Cove, the monastic ruins at Glendalough situated in the gorgeous Wicklow Mountains, and Yeats's home at Thoor Ballylee will help you to construct a profound understanding of Irish literary tradition. All of our reading will be enriched by visits to such relevant sites of historical, archaeological and mythical significance. Content: Goals Students who complete this course will demonstrate: A broad knowledge of the phases of Irish Literary History An introductory to intermediate grasp of a selection of major Irish literary texts and authors An understanding of the significance of geography and landscape in Irish literary texts An understanding of the historical, political and other cultural forces that shape Irish literature Major Topics: Medieval Irish Literature and the Monastic Tradition. Read The Tain, excerpts from the autobiography of St. Patrick and a few short lyrics in connection with Archaeological and Monastic Sites Irish Writing from Plantation to the beginning of the Irish Literary Revival. Read Swift, Edgeworth, Carleton and discuss in relation to a visit to Irish Writers Museum, Irish History Museum, Saint Patrick's Cathedral and other sites in Dublin The Irish Literary Revival Read Wilde, Joyce, Yeats, Synge and Gregory and discuss in relation to Irish Writers Museum, various Dublin sites such as the Joyce Museum in Sandycove, the Yeats Exhibit and the National Library, the Yeats Country and other sites in the West of Ireland such as the Aran Islands, and (if possible) a theater performance in Dublin or Sligo. Irish Fiction and Poetry Since Joyce and Yeats: Read selections from Lavin, O'Brien, Behan, Heaney, Carson, Boland and Tobin in relation to sites in Dublin, Derry and Belfast (In addition to those mentioned previously: Belfast Murals, the Corrymeela Institute, Linden Hall Library, Milltown Cemetery, etc.) Assessment Methods: READING AND CLASS DISCUSSION (20%) Our our time is short, but we will have daily class meetings in addition to our visits to the sites on our itinerary. We will use these periods to discuss the short readings and get to know the background that will help you make connections between the places we are visiting and the works we are reading. Many of these meetings will take place early in the day or later in the evening, possibly over breakfast, so you will need to adjust your sleep schedules to be present. JOURNAL AND WORKBOOK (30%) You will document your experiences observations daily in a Travel Log or Journal. This work will take about 30 minutes per day. In addition to recording where you went and what you saw, personal reflections are perfectly appropriately. I will read these journals, but if there is something you do not want me to read, fold the written page over and mark "Do Not Read." Since I've traveled a good deal and served as faculty on two study abroad trips to London, I know from personal experience that it can be very difficult to keep up with a journal of this sort. Often we are simply tired and trust our memories too much. I've had some students attempt to write their journals after they returned home, a dubious strategy at best. For this reason, part of your grade on the journal will come from your completing your entries and sharing them with me on a daily basis. The Workbook may sound a little bit like middle school, but I ask you to trust that I will not saddle you with busy work. I developed a series of "work sheets" that will help you to experience and gather particular information from each site we visit. We will discuss these exercises after a given visit. You will use them to complete your final project. ESSAY EXAM (20%) This is essentially your "final exam" After you return from Ireland, write a six to seven page paper that reflects on how five of the authors we read and discussed process one of the following themes: The Role of Women Motherhood Violence Nationalism Food (focusing perhaps on appetites or hunger) Storytelling Folklore Geography/Place HISTORY OF IRISH LITERATURE PROJECT (30%) One of the challenges of this trip is that we will be visiting places of literary, cultural, and historical significance in an order that bears no relation to the chronology of Irish Literary History. For example, I want you to understand the role of early Christian Monasteries, but we won't visit the ruins of one such monastery until the last days of our trip! To help you order and synthesize your material, you will assemble your notes, work sheets results, and excerpts from your journal and the pictures you will undoubtedly collect into a book that writes the history of Irish literature as you come to understand it. In other words, you will turn your written work, memories and pictures into a “book” that tells presents Irish literary history and its contexts in chronological order. To produce this book you may use a largish blank journal, a word processor, prezi, or one of the many commercial and free apps for computers or tablets that are easily available. I will be using the ipad app "Noteshelf" for my version of this project. This work will be worth 30% of your final grade. 1906 College Heights Blvd – Tate Page Hall Room 104 – Bowling Green, KY 42101 – 270‐745‐4512 – [email protected] .
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Honour and Early Irish Society: a Study of the Táin Bó Cúalnge
    Honour and Early Irish Society: a Study of the Táin Bó Cúalnge David Noel Wilson, B.A. Hon., Grad. Dip. Data Processing, Grad. Dip. History. Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Masters of Arts (with Advanced Seminars component) in the Department of History, Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne. July, 2004 © David N. Wilson 1 Abstract David Noel Wilson, Honour and Early Irish Society: a Study of the Táin Bó Cúalnge. This is a study of an early Irish heroic tale, the Táin Bó Cúailnge (The Cattle Raid of the Cooley). It examines the role and function of honour, both within the tale and within the society that produced the text. Its demonstrates how the pursuit of honour has influenced both the theme and structure of the Táin . Questions about honour and about the resolution of conflicting obligations form the subject matter of many of the heroic tales. The rewards and punishments of honour and shame are the primary mechanism of social control in societies without organised instruments of social coercion, such as a police force: these societies can be defined as being ‘honour-based’. Early Ireland was an honour- based society. This study proposes that, in honour-based societies, to act honourably was to act with ‘appropriate and balanced reciprocity’. Applying this understanding to the analysis of the Táin suggests a new approach to the reading the tale. This approach explains how the seemingly repetitive accounts of Cú Chulainn in single combat, which some scholars have found wearisome, serve to maximise his honour as a warrior in the eyes of the audience of the tale.
    [Show full text]
  • Modern and Contemporary Irish Literature
    Reading List: Modern and Contemporary Irish Literature Students preparing for a doctoral examination in this field are asked to compose a reading list, in conjunction with their exam committee, drawn from the core of writers and scholars whose work appears below. We expect students to add to, subtract from, and modify this list as suits their purposes and interests. Students are not responsible for reading everything on this section list; instead, they should create a personalized list of approximately 40-50 texts, using this list as a guide. However, at least 50% of a student’s examination reading should come from this list. Poetry: W. B. Yeats Patrick Kavanagh Louis MacNeice Thomas Kinsella John Montague Seamus Heaney Rita Ann Higgins Michael Longley Derek Mahon Ciaran Carson Medbh McGuckian Paul Muldoon Eavan Boland Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin Paula Meehan Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill Dennis O’Driscoll Cathal Ó Searcaigh Chris Agee (ed.)—The New North: Contemporary Poetry from Northern Ireland Short Fiction: Sean O’Faolain—The Short Story Ben Forkner (ed.)—Modern Irish Short Stories W. B. Yeats—Irish Fairy and Folk Tales George Moore—The Untilled Field James Joyce—Dubliners Elizabeth Bowen—Collected Stories Frank O’Connor—Collected Stories Mary Lavin—In a Café: Selected Stories Edna O’Brien—A Fanatic Heart: Selected Stories (especially the stories from Returning) William Trevor—Collected Stories Bernard MacLaverty—Collected Stories Éilís Ní Dhuibhne—Midwife to the Fairies: New and Selected Stories Emma Donoghue—The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Modern Irish Literature Syllabus Lecturer Information Credits
    Modern Irish Literature Syllabus Fall Semester, 2020, Course Listing : CAS EN 392 Lecturer Information Lecturer: Dr Eibhlín Evans ([email protected]) Office: Boston University - DCU Office By Request Credits: 4BU Credits + 3 Hub Units Class Times Tuesday: 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM 17th September – 15th October Friday 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM 1st November – 29th November Venues TBC General Information Course Overview For such a small island Ireland punches well above its weight on the global literary stage and Irish writers are feted the world over. The twentieth century saw four Irish Nobel Laureates awarded. (Yeats, Shaw, Beckett, Heaney). Dublin holds a UNESCO City of Literature permanent designation. Our literary culture is diverse, inclusive and admired internationally. This course introduces students to the key writers in modern Irish literature. Beginning with the work of W.B. Yeats and Lady Augusta Gregory at the end of the nineteenth century it will trace the developments in Ireland’s literary culture through the often turbulent twentieth century, right up to recent times. Literature was at the heart of Irish culture throughout these times and remains at the centre of Irish cultural life and identity today. We will chart the 1 initially positive influence of cultural nationalist movements, through to more resistant moments as the changes and challenges of the twentieth century were registered in Irish society. Throughout this period Literature itself was changing as new movements emerged and as new forms of expression developed. The literature we will explore will include exemplary models of the innovative forms and original voices that emerged in Ireland.
    [Show full text]
  • Volume 2, Issue 1, Bealtaine 2003
    TRISKELE A newsletter of UWM’s Center for Celtic Studies Volume 2, Issue 1 Bealtaine, 2003 Fáilte! Croeso! Mannbet! Kroesan! Welcome! Tá an teanga beo i Milwaukee! The language lives in Milwaukee! UWM has the distinction of being one of a small handful of colleges in North America offering a full program on the Irish language (Gaelic). The tradition began some thirty years ago with the innovative work of the late Professor Janet Dunleavy and her husband Gareth. Today we offer four semesters in conversational Gaelic along with complementary courses in literature and culture and a very popular Study Abroad program in the Donegal Gaeltacht. The study and appreciation of this richest and oldest of European vernacular languages has become one of the strengths and cornerstones of our Celtic Studies program. The Milwaukee community also has a long history of activism in support of Irish language preservation. Jeremiah Curtin, noted linguist and diplomat and the first Milwaukeean to attend Harvard, made it his business to learn Irish among the Irish Gaelic community of Boston. As an ethnographer working for the Smithsonian Institute, he was one of the first collectors of Irish folklore to use the spoken tongue of the people rather than the Hiberno-English used by the likes of William Butler Yeats and Lady Gregory. Jeremiah Quinn, who left Ireland as a young man, capped a lifelong local commitment to Irish language and culture when in 1906, at the Pabst Theatre, he introduced Dr. Douglas Hyde to a capacity crowd, including the Governor, Archbishop, and other dignitaries. Hyde, one of the founders of the Gaelic League that was organized to halt the decline of the language, went on to become the first president of Ireland in 1937.
    [Show full text]
  • Reading the Irish Woman: Studies in Cultural Encounter and Exchange, 1714–1960
    Reading the Irish Woman: Studies in Cultural Encounter and Exchange, 1714–1960 Meaney, Reading the Irish Woman.indd 1 15/07/2013 12:33:33 Reappraisals in Irish History Editors Enda Delaney (University of Edinburgh) Maria Luddy (University of Warwick) Reappraisals in Irish History offers new insights into Irish history, society and culture from 1750. Recognising the many methodologies that make up historical research, the series presents innovative and interdisciplinary work that is conceptual and interpretative, and expands and challenges the common understandings of the Irish past. It showcases new and exciting scholarship on subjects such as the history of gender, power, class, the body, landscape, memory and social and cultural change. It also reflects the diversity of Irish historical writing, since it includes titles that are empirically sophisticated together with conceptually driven synoptic studies. 1. Jonathan Jeffrey Wright, The ‘Natural Leaders’ and their World: Politics, Culture and Society in Belfast, c.1801–1832 Meaney, Reading the Irish Woman.indd 2 15/07/2013 12:33:33 Reading the Irish Woman Studies in Cultural Encounter and Exchange, 1714–1960 GerArdiNE MEANEY, MARY O’Dowd AND BerNAdeTTE WHelAN liVerPool UNIVersiTY Press Meaney, Reading the Irish Woman.indd 3 15/07/2013 12:33:33 reading the irish woman First published 2013 by Liverpool University Press 4 Cambridge Street Liverpool L69 7ZU Copyright © 2013 Gerardine Meaney, Mary O’Dowd and Bernadette Whelan The rights of Gerardine Meaney, Mary O’Dowd and Bernadette Whelan to be identified as the authors of this book have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
    [Show full text]
  • Music in Irish Emigration Literature
    The University of Notre Dame Australia ResearchOnline@ND Theses 2017 Singing exile: Music in Irish emigration literature Christopher McCann The University of Notre Dame Australia Follow this and additional works at: https://researchonline.nd.edu.au/theses Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA Copyright Regulations 1969 WARNING The material in this communication may be subject to copyright under the Act. Any further copying or communication of this material by you may be the subject of copyright protection under the Act. Do not remove this notice. Publication Details McCann, C. (2017). Singing exile: Music in Irish emigration literature (Master of Arts (Thesis)). University of Notre Dame Australia. https://researchonline.nd.edu.au/theses/166 This dissertation/thesis is brought to you by ResearchOnline@ND. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses by an authorized administrator of ResearchOnline@ND. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Singing Exile: Music in Irish Emigration Literature by Christopher McCann A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts (Research) at the University of Notre Dame Australia (Fremantle) June 2017 Contents Abstract iii Acknowledgements v Introduction 1 Chapter One: The Revival Cultural Field and Exile: George Moore and James Joyce 13 Chapter Two: Traditional Music and the Post-Independence Exodus to Britain 43 Chapter Three: Between Two Worlds: Music at the American wake 66 Chapter Four: “Os comhair lán an tí”: Sean-nós as a site of memory in Brooklyn 93 Chapter Five: Imagined Geography and Communal Memory in Come Back to Erin 120 Conclusion 144 Appendix: Annotated Discography 150 Bibliography 158 ii Abstract Ireland possesses a cultural heritage that is particularly literary and musical.
    [Show full text]
  • Irish Literature: a Brief Survey William T
    University of Rhode Island DigitalCommons@URI Technical Services Department Faculty Publications Technical Services 1990 Irish Literature: A Brief Survey William T. O'Malley University of Rhode Island, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.uri.edu/lib_ts_pubs Part of the Library and Information Science Commons Citation/Publisher Attribution O'Malley, William T., "Irish Literature: A Brief Survey" (1990). Technical Services Department Faculty Publications. Paper 23. http://digitalcommons.uri.edu/lib_ts_pubs/23 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Technical Services at DigitalCommons@URI. It has been accepted for inclusion in Technical Services Department Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@URI. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Irish Literature Remarks at Cranston Leisure Center, 20 October 1990. I am delighted to take part in your series of talks on 'books and more books'. The wide range of topics is evidence of your vivacity and openness to the world of ideas. When I was asked to speak to you on Irish Literature, I was intensely eager to accept at this time because the invitation coincided with the realization that this year is the 50th anniversary of the death of the great Irish poet William Butler Yeats. Yeats was the dominant figure, during his lifetime, not only on the Irish scene, but on the broader stage of English language letters. Also of interest, is the connection between Yeats and the movement now known as the Irish Literary Renaissance which he founded, and Rhode Island. More on that subject anon.
    [Show full text]
  • Post-Agreement Northern Irish Literature
    NEW DIRECTIONS IN IRISH AND IRISH AMERICAN LITERATURE POST-AGREEMENT NORTHERN IRISH LITERATURE Lost in a Liminal Space? Birte Heidemann New Directions in Irish and Irish American Literature Series editor Claire Culleton Kent State University Kent , OH , USA Aim of the Series: New Directions in Irish and Irish American Literature promotes fresh scholarship that explores models of Irish and Irish American identity and examines issues that address and shape the contours of Irishness and works that investigate the fl uid, shifting, and sometimes multivalent discipline of Irish Studies. Politics, the academy, gender, and Irish and Irish American culture, among other things, have not only inspired but affected recent scholarship centred on Irish and Irish American literature. The series’ focus on Irish and Irish American literature and culture contributes to our twenty-fi rst century understanding of Ireland, America, Irish Americans, and the creative, intellectual, and theoretical spaces between. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/14747 Birte Heidemann Post-Agreement Northern Irish Literature Lost in a Liminal Space? Birte Heidemann Postdoctoral Researcher University of Bremen , Germany New Directions in Irish and Irish American Literature ISBN 978-3-319-28990-8 ISBN 978-3-319-28991-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-28991-5 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016939246 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identifi ed as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This work is subject to copyright.
    [Show full text]
  • Harry White, Music and the Irish Literary Imagination Journal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland, 5 (2009–10), P. 89
    Harry White, Music and the Irish Literary Imagination HARRY WHITE, MUSIC AND THE IRISH LITERARY IMAGINATION (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), ISBN 978-0-19-954732-6, 260pp, £58 (hardback) This book begins with a thoughtful discussion of Eavan Boland’s comment about Derek Mahon. She notes that while he was trapped to a degree by his identity as a ‘Northern’ poet, she, as a woman, found herself ‘without a discourse’ (vii). This dia- lectic of inclusion and exclusion provides a stylistic point of origin, or omphalos, to use the title of chapter one, for White’s discussion of the role of music in the Irish literary imagination. Structurally this is a trope that binds the book together as he traces the influence, overt or covert, of music in selected Irish writers. Unlike many contempo- rary critics, who leave it very much to the reader to judge the telos of their argument, White is commendably clear about his own aims and on the first page of the preface sets out his argumentative stall (or offers hostages to fortune) with admirable clarity, noting that: the musical discourse which pervades Irish writing becomes more difficult to overlook, if only because its striking presence redeems the long absence of musical works from Irish cultural history, to the extent that Irish poetry, drama, and fiction have functioned as objective corre- latives of musical genres which originated elsewhere. Certain Irish writers are explicit on this point (Bernard Shaw and James Joyce are good examples), but the discourse itself deserves an exposition and a history. (vii) He traces this argument through Thomas Moore and the auditory imagination; Yeats and the music of poetry; Synge and the notion of abandoning music; Shaw and opera; the thought-tormented music of Joyce; words after music in Beckett; operas of the Irish mind and Friel; and he concludes with a chapter on Heaney on music and the jurisdiction of literary forms.
    [Show full text]
  • The Imaginary Irish Peasant
    7KH,PDJLQDU\,ULVK3HDVDQW $XWKRU V (GZDUG+LUVFK 6RXUFH30/$9RO1R 2FW SS 3XEOLVKHGE\Modern Language Association 6WDEOH85/http://www.jstor.org/stable/462684 . $FFHVVHG Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=mla. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Modern Language Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to PMLA. http://www.jstor.org EdwardHirsch The Imaginary Irish Peasant EDWARD HIRSCH, profes- A man who does not exist, sor of English at the University A man who is but a dream . W. B. Yeats, "TheFisherman" of Houston, is the author of three books of poems: For the Sleepwalkers (Knopf; 1981), Wild Gratitude (Knopf, 1986), which won the National Book HROUGHOUT THE nineteenth century, but particu- larly in there was an in- Critics' Circle Award, and The postfamine Ireland, increasing terest in the rural customs and stories of the Irish country people.
    [Show full text]
  • Hiberno-English and the Teaching of Modern and Contemporary Irish… Links & Letters 5, 1998 39
    Links & Letters 5, 1998 37-60 View metadata, citationHiberno-English and similar papers at core.ac.uk and the teaching of modernbrought and to you by CORE contemporary Irish literature in an EFLprovided bycontext Revistes Catalanes* amb Accés Obert Anna Asián Universitat Pompeu Fabra James McCullough Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona October 1997 Abstract In this paper, we provide a brief historical, linguistic, and literary guide to Hiberno-Eng- lish, or Irish English, for teachers of English as a Foreign Language who use literature in their classes. We discuss the historical and social development of this dialect and relate it to the works of such authors as Joyce, Synge and Kennelly. Then we describe certain lin- guistic and cultural features of it which appear in literary texts and could lead to misinter- pretations if they are not taken into account. Finally, we discuss how to use works written in non-standard varieties of English, like Hiberno-English, in the classroom, basing our discussion on an early twentieth century play, The Tinker’s Wedding by Synge, and a cur- rent novel and film, The Snapper, by Doyle. Key words: Hiberno-English, Irish Literature, Language and Literature, Literary Dialect, Teaching Literature in EFL. Table of Contents 1. Introduction 4. HE in the EFL classroom: 2. Hiberno-English: context and history some pedagogical considerations 3. Features of Hiberno-English 5. Conclusion in Irish literature References (*) We would like to thank David Prendergast for his help on this article. He gave us sound advice from beginning to end, and suffered through the reading of several previous ver- sions.
    [Show full text]
  • Northern Irish Literature from Good Friday to Brexit
    Crossings: Northern Irish Literature from Good Friday to Brexit Lehner, S. (2020). Crossings: Northern Irish Literature from Good Friday to Brexit. In E. Falci, & P. Reynolds (Eds.), Irish Literature in Transition, , 1980-2020 (Vol. Volume 6, pp. 136-151). Cambridge University Press. Published in: Irish Literature in Transition, , 1980-2020 Document Version: Peer reviewed version Queen's University Belfast - Research Portal: Link to publication record in Queen's University Belfast Research Portal Publisher rights Copyright 2020 Cambridge University Press. This work is made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. Please refer to any applicable terms of use of the publisher. General rights Copyright for the publications made accessible via the Queen's University Belfast Research Portal is retained by the author(s) and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Take down policy The Research Portal is Queen's institutional repository that provides access to Queen's research output. Every effort has been made to ensure that content in the Research Portal does not infringe any person's rights, or applicable UK laws. If you discover content in the Research Portal that you believe breaches copyright or violates any law, please contact [email protected]. Download date:29. Sep. 2021 Crossings: Northern Irish Literature from Good Friday to Brexit Stefanie Lehner Historically, culturally, and politically, Northern Irish literature has always been a nodal-point for multiple crossings. First articulated in 1987, Edna Longley pointedly captured these literary crosscurrents with the Denkbild [thought-image] of an open-ended ‘cultural corridor’, which is set against those political projects wishing to close it off, namely nationalism and unionism.
    [Show full text]