Option Name: Twentieth‐Century Irish Poetry after Yeats
Lecturer Name and Email Address: Dr Tom Walker ([email protected])
ECTS Weighting: 10
Semester/Term Taught: Michaelmas Term 2019
Learning Outcomes: ‐ To have developed high‐level transferable skills in critical analysis and writing ‐ To have engaged with relevant theoretical and critical arguments ‐ To have engaged with relevant historical and cultural contexts.
Option Learning Aims: ‐ To enhance awareness of critical approaches to modern Irish poetry ‐ To further understanding of the relevance of Irish history and culture to reading modern Irish Poetry ‐ To explore issues of canon, influence and allusion, and poetic form and language.
Option Content: The course will consider various directions taken by Irish poetry over the last eighty years. It will do so by concentrating on key volumes published from the 1940s down to near the present. Seminars will emphasise relevant historical and cultural contexts, as well as attending to questions of poetics and ideology.
Assessment Details: Type of Assessment (Continuous and/or Exam): Continuous Number of Components: 2 Word Count of Component(s): 2,000 and 4,000 Percentage Value of Component(s): 30% and 70%
1. Introduction 2. Sheila Wingfield, Beat Drum, Beat Heart (1946) 3. Patrick Kavanagh, Come Dance with Kitty Stobling and Other Poems (1960) 4. Louis MacNeice, The Burning Perch (1963) 5. Thomas Kinsella, New Poems (1973) 6. Seamus Heaney, Field Work (1979) 7. Reading Week 8. Derek Mahon, The Hunt By Night (1983) 9. Eavan Boland, Outside History (1990) 10. Paul Muldoon, The Annals of Chile (1994) 11. Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, The Girl Who Married the Reindeer (2001) 12. Leontia Flynn, Profit and Loss (2011)
Primary Texts Sheila Wingfield’s Beat Drum, Beat Heart (1946) is a collector’s item, but a pdf of the long poem will be provided. Extracts can also be found in Sheila Wingfield, Poems, ed. Collins (Liberties Press) Patrick Kavanagh, Come Dance with Kitty Stobling and Other Poems (1960) is another collector’s item but the poems can be found in Collected Poems, ed. Antoinette Quinn (Penguin) and Quinn’s Penguin Selected also has most of the key poems. A pdf of the poems will be provided Louis MacNeice, The Burning Perch (Faber) or Collected Poems, ed. McDonald (Faber) or available through the LION database Thomas Kinsella, New Poems (1973) is another rare volume, but the key poems are in Collected Poems or mostly in Selected Poems (both Carcanet). However, due to complex textual issues a pdf will be provided of the original printing of the volume to be discussed Seamus Heaney, Field Work or most of the poems are also in Opened Ground: Poems 1966– 1996 (Faber) or or available through the LION database Derek Mahon, The Hunt By Night (Oxford University Press) – a pdf will be provided Eavan Boland, Outside History or New Collected Poems (both Carcanet) Paul Muldoon, The Annals of Chile (Faber) or Poems 1968–1998 (Faber) or available through the LION database Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, The Girl Who Married the Reindeer (Gallery) or most of the key poems can be found in Selected Poems (Gallery/Faber) Leontia Flynn, Profit and Loss (Jonathan Cape)