A Terrible Beauty: Cultural Revival and Political Rebellion in Ireland

An MLA Pro-seminar (LIT 200) Charles Junkerman Stanford Continuing Studies

In the last decades of the 19th century, Ireland experienced a dramatic cultural renaissance, that saw the revival of the Gaelic language, the reinvention of Irish sports, the establishment of a national theater, the recovery of thousands of folksong and tales, and the emergence of some of the greatest poets and playwrights of modern times. Alongside this cultural activity, political associations like the Irish Republican Brotherhood and Sinn Fein gained momentum. Together, they gave definition to Ireland’s smoldering opposition to British colonialism that culminated in the Easter Rising of 1916, followed by the War of Independence and the Irish Civil War that ended only in 1923.

In this seminar, we will read the work of poets and playwrights of the “Irish Renaissance” and study the historical events that made the names of political actors as celebrated in Irish memory as the poets. We will also find time to watch Neil Jordan’s great film, Michael Collins.

Syllabus (tentative):

Week 1: Introduction and Overview

Kiberd, pp. 1-32 Kee, as much of pp. 1-151 as you can manage

Week 2: The Celtic Revival, Lady Gregory, and Early Yeats

Lady Gregory, “Cathleen Ni Houlihan” in Harrington Lady Gregory, “Our Irish Theatre” in Harrington, 377-386 Critical Essays in Harrington, 398-423 and 433-446

Yeats: Early Poems “The Stolen Child,” “Down by the Salley Gardens, ” “To the Rose Upon the Rood of Time,” “Fergus and the Druid,” “The Rose of the World,” “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” "Who Goes with Fergus?" “To Ireland in the Coming Times,” “The Hosting of the Sidhe,” “The Song of Wandering Aengus”

Kiberd, 136-165

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Week 3: Oscar Wilde

Wilde, “The Importance of Being Earnest” Camille Paglia, “Oscar Wilde and the English Epicene” pp. 116-136 in Norton Kiberd, pp. 33-50 Excerpts from “The Truth of Masks,” “The Decay of Lying,” and “The Soul of Man under Socialism” (handout)

Week 4: Synge on the Aran Islands

Synge, The Aran Islands, including excellent introduction: “Place/Person/Book” Critical essays in Harrington, pp. 447-450 Tim Robinson (handout)

Week 5: Synge on The Abbey Stage

Synge, “Riders to the Sea” in Harrington Synge, “The Playboy of the Western World” in Harrington Critical essays in Harrington, pp. 454-470 Kiberd, pp. 166-188 Rene Girard, from Violence and the Sacred (handout)

Week 6: Joyce’s Dubliners

Dubliners Critical essays in Norton, TBD Kiberd, pp. 327-355

Week 7: Yeats: Love, Hate, and Restraint through Gracious Forms

"In the Seven Woods," “Upon a House Shaken by the Land Agitation,” "Introductory Rhymes," "To a Wealthy Man," “A Coat,” "The Wild Swans at Coole," “In Memory of Major Robert Gregory,” "An Irish Airman Foresees his Death," “Lines Written in Dejection,” “The Fisherman,” “A Prayer for my Daughter,” "To be Carved on a Stone . . . ," “Coole Park, 1929,” “When You are Old,” "The Lover Mourns for the Loss of Love," "He wishes his Beloved were Dead," "He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven," “The Folly of Being Comforted,” “ Never Give All the Heart,” “Adam's Curse,” “O, Do Not Love Too Long,” “No Second Troy,” “Reconciliation,” “A Drinking 3

Song,” "Fallen Majesty," “Men Improve with Years,” “A Song,” “Broken Dreams,” “To a Wealthy Man . . .,” “September, 1913,” "Paudeen," "To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing," “The People”

Week 8: The Easter Rising

Patrick Pearse and James Connolly political writings (handouts)

Yeats poems: "Easter 1916," "On a Political Prisoner," “The Second Coming,” “To be Carved on a Stone at Thoor Ballylee,” “The Tower,” “Meditations in Time of Civil War,” “Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen,” "In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz"

Kiberd, 191-217 Kee, 153-207

Week 9: Michael Collins: Rising, Independence, and Civil War

Potluck dinner and film screening “Michael Collins” by Neil Jordan

Week 10: Yeats, “Their Ancient Glittering Eyes are Gay”

"A Dialogue of Self and Soul," "Byzantium," "Vacillation," “Sailing to Byzantium,” “Leda and the Swan,” “Among School Children,” “Lapis Lazuli,” “Beautiful Lofty Things,” “The Municipal Gallery Revisited,” “The Circus Animals' Desertion,” “Long Legged Fly,” “Politics”

Pethica, Essays TBD

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Seminar paper: A 12-15 page seminar paper on a topic of the student’s choosing in consultation with Charles Junkerman, will be due on Monday, June 17.

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Books:

Required:

Please buy the editions I’ve requested. They are the most authoritative, have good critical essays included (and we’ll all be on the same page in our discussions). All the books are available in paperback at good prices, new and used, at amazon.com and abebooks.com.

Robert Kee, Ireland, A History (Little Brown, 2003, ISBN: 978-0-349-11676- 1)

Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland (Harvard University Press, 1997, ISBN: 0- 674-46364-1)

John P. Harrington, ed., Modern Irish Drama (Norton Critical Edition, 1991, ISBN: 0-393-96063-3)

Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (Norton Critical Edition, 2006, ISBN: 978-0-393-92753-5)

James Pethica, ed., Yeats’s Poetry, Drama, and Prose (Norton Critical Edition, 2000, ISBN: 0393974979)

John Millington Synge, The Aran Islands (Penguin Classics, 1992, ISBN: 0140184325)

James Joyce, Dubliners (Norton Critical Edition, 2006, ISBN: 978-0-393- 97851-3)

Recommended

Helen Litton, Irish Rebellions, 1798-1916, (Wolfhound Press, Dublin, 1998, ISBN: 0-86327-634-2)

Micheal Mac Liammoir and Eavan Boland, W.B. Yeats (Thames and Hudson, 1971, ISBN: 0-500-26022-2

Roddy Doyle, A Star Called Henry (Penguin, 2004, ISBN: 978-0143034612)