Irish University Review: a journal of Irish Studies articles from September 2007

Irish University Review: a journal of Irish Studies archives from September 2007

Jane Austen in Ireland, 1845.
September 22, 2007... Dear friend, I thought you might be interested in this oddity I stumbled upon recently. As you know, our classes in local history are a focal point of involvement between this college and the community. Since the launch of our diploma course we...

From Chinese wisdom to Irish wit: Zhuangzi and Oscar Wilde.
September 22, 2007... In February 1890, there appeared an extraordinary review. Under the title of 'A Chinese Sage', it hailed the 'first complete English translation' by Herbert A. Giles of the works of Zhuangzi (or 'Chuang Tsu' as it was spelled under the old...

'The hammers of the stone-cutters': Samuel Beckett's stone imagery.
September 22, 2007... Beckett's fascination with the inorganic dates back to his childhood. James Knowlson, in his biography, explains his early interest in stone in psychological terms: [Beckett] used to take stones of which he was particularly fond ...

Flann O'Brien and Samuel Beckett.
September 22, 2007... Samuel Beckett's literary career is usually divided into three phases: the early Beckett with poems and prose works, dating from 1930, the mature Beckett with novels like Molloy and plays like Waiting for Godot, dating from the late 1940s, and...

Sam Cree: sex, sects, and comedy.
September 22, 2007... On 25 February, 2005, the Moycraig Young Farmers Club Drama group presented Widows' Paradise, a comedy in three acts, by Sam Cree, in Killygullib Hall (where there was no gospel meeting on that day). There is no surprise in this. Young Farmers...

Playing and singing toward devolution: Stewart Parker's ethical aesthetics in Kingdom Come and Northern star.
September 22, 2007... 'No aesthetic can be a constant, except an aesthetic based on the idea of inconstancy, metamorphosis, or, to borrow a term from politics, "perpetual revolution".' Salman Rushdie (1) I. Parker's Ethical Aesthetics The playwright...

Brian Friel's rituals of memory.
September 22, 2007... In all religion, as in all art, there is this element of make-believe. Not the attempt to deceive, but a desire to re-live, to re-present. Jane Harrison, Themis (1912) As though god's death were but a play. W.B. Yeats, The...

'The claim of eternity': language and death in Marina Carr's Portia Coughlan.
September 22, 2007... When questioned about the centrality of death and dying in her work, Marina Carr discusses the tensions between the 'pursuit of darkness' and that of light, and of characters having to 'earn' their death, their 'release', from an earth-bound...

Imaginary Cassandra?: Conor Cruise O'Brien as public intellectual in Ireland.(Biography)
September 22, 2007... Conor Cruise O'Brien has probably been the most conspicuous Irish public intellectual of his time, and, perhaps, the most influential such voice in Irish politics. In particular, O'Brien has been a crucial critic of the Irish political...

Lacanian 'Pussy': towards a psychoanalytic reading of Patrick McCabe's Breakfast on Pluto.
September 22, 2007... I. The Rhetoric of Sameness Almost since the beginning of the Northern Irish Troubles nearly forty years ago, commentators and observers have often noted that there is a great deal of similarity between the two conflicting communities....

Recording the unpoetic: Eavan Boland's silences.
September 22, 2007... In 'Dumbness and Eloquence: A Note on English as We Write it in Ireland', Seamus Deane argues that 'Irish writing in the English language' has been, and still is, 'obsessed with the problems involved in the idea of representation', how to...

Otherworldly women and neurotic fairies: the cultural construction of women in Angela Bourke's writing.
September 22, 2007... This essay is concerned with the relationship between stories and social reality in Angela Bourke's writing. Bourke has written a short story collection entitled By Salt Water and is an academic working on subjects related to Irish folklore and...

IASIL Bibliography Bulletin 2006.(Bibliography)
September 22, 2007... On behalf of the Bibliography Committee, I am pleased to present the 2006 installment of the Bibliography Bulletin. I would like to draw readers' attention to some changes in presentation this year. The 'General Studies' section is now in...

IASIL bibliography for 2006.(Bibliography)
September 22, 2007... General Studies A. LITERATURE ALCOBIA-MURPHY, Shane, Sympathetic Ink: Intertextual Relations in Northern Irish Poetry, Liverpool UP (Liverpool), 272. ALONSO GIRALDEZ, Jose Miguel, 'Contemporary Irish Poetry: Actual Territories and...

List of books reviewed.(Brief article)(List)
September 22, 2007... Arthur, Chris, Irish Willow (Honor O'Connor) Buning, Marius, Sjef Houppermans, Dirk van Hulle, and Danie1e de Ruyter (editors), Historicising Beckett/ Issues of Performance: Beckett dans l'histoire/ En Jouant Beckett. Samuel Beckett...

Daniel Tobin (editor), The Book of Irish American Poetry From the Eighteenth Century to the Present.(Book review)
September 22, 2007... Daniel Tobin (editor), The Book of Irish American Poetry From the Eighteenth Century to the Present. Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007. vii + 925 pages. USD 65.00 It is unavoidable to remark that such an anthology as this could...

Fionnuala Croke (editor), Samuel Beckett: A Passion for Paintings.
September 22, 2007... Fionnuala Croke (editor), Samuel Beckett: A Passion for Paintings. Dublin: National Gallery of Ireland, 2006. 104 pages. EUR 20.00. Pascale Casanova, Samuel Beckett: Anatomy of a Literary Revolution. Translated by Gregory Elliott. London:...

Patricia Boyle Haberstroh and Christine St. Peter (editors), Opening the Field: Irish Women, Texts and Contexts.(Book review)
September 22, 2007... Patricia Boyle Haberstroh and Christine St. Peter (editors), Opening the Field: Irish Women, Texts and Contexts. Cork: Cork University Press, 2007. vii +181 pages. EUR 39.00. This collection, with its at once playful and suggestive...

Chris Arthur, Irish Willow.(Book review)
September 22, 2007... Chris Arthur, Irish Willow. Aurora, Colorado: The Davies Group, Publishers, 2002. xvi + 234 pages. No price given. Irish Willow (2002) is the second collection of essays from the pen of Chris Arthur to be published in the USA by The Davies...

Stephen O'Neill, Staging Ireland: Representations in Shakespeare and Renaissance Drama.(Book review)
September 22, 2007... Stephen O'Neill, Staging Ireland: Representations in Shakespeare and Renaissance Drama. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007. 208 pages. EUR 55.00 (hardback). Irish literary criticism has long preoccupied itself with identity and nationhood....

Mary Pierse (editor), George Moore: Artistic Visions and Literary Worlds.(Book review)
September 22, 2007... Mary Pierse (editor), George Moore: Artistic Visions and Literary Worlds. Cambridge: Scholars Press, 2006. GBP 39.99. The first, and perhaps the pivotal essay in this collection, is by Adrian Frazier. It deals with Moore's value as a...

Peter Gahan, Shaw Shadows: Rereading the Texts of Bernard Shaw.(Book review)
September 22, 2007... Peter Gahan, Shaw Shadows: Rereading the Texts of Bernard Shaw. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004. xxiv+316 pages. USD 59.95. In the year 2006 it was difficult in Dublin to overlook the fact of Beckett's centenary and all too...

Julia M. Wright, Ireland, India and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Literature.(Book review)
September 22, 2007... Julia M. Wright, Ireland, India and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 268 pages. GBP 50.00. Comparative literature as a discipline of study is rare in Irish universities. The reason...

Anne Enright, The Gathering.(Book review)
September 22, 2007... Anne Enright, The Gathering. London: Jonathan Cape, 2007. x + 261 pages. EUR 18.45. Enright's The Gathering brings not only twelve siblings together (throughout the book, biblical overtones abound) but also many sociopolitical, moral, and...

Anthony Roche (editor), The Cambridge Companion to Brian Friel.(Book review)
September 22, 2007... Anthony Roche (editor), The Cambridge Companion to Brian Friel. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 177 pages. USD 29.99; STG 17.99. The Cambridge Companion to Brian Friel, a collection of thirteen original essays, is...

List of books received.(Bibliography)
September 22, 2007... Balzano, Wanda, Anne Mulhall, and Moynagh Sullivan (editors), Irish Postmodernisms and Popular Culture. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. vii + 231 pages. GBP 50.00 (hardback). Beckman, Richard, Joyce's Rare View: The Nature...