Irish and Irish Immigration Studies

ENGL 448A- Survey of Irish Literature                                                                          Dr. Wiley

Course Description

A survey of the major works of Irish literature from the medieval period through the seventeenth century.

 

Required Texts

• Thomas Kinsella (trans.), The Táin (Oxford University Press, USA 2002).
• John Koch with contributions by John Carey, The Celtic Heroic Age: Literary Sources for Ancient Celtic Europe and Early Ireland and Wales. Fourth Edition (David Brown Book Company, 2003).
• Ann Dooley and Harry Roe (trans.), Tales of the Elders of Ireland (Oxford University Press, 2008).
• Oliver Davies (ed.), Celtic Spirituality (Paulist Press, 2000).
• Course Packet (Kopies & More)

 

Course Requirements

• Paper 1 (1000 words) -- 25%
• Paper 2 (1000 words) -- 25%
• Paper 3 (1000 words) -- 25%
• Final Take-home Essay Examination -- 25%

 

Course Objectives

• Become familiar with the main categories of early Irish prose (Ulster Cycle, Mythological Cycle, Kings’ Tales, Fenian Cycle, Hagiography, etc.)
• Become familiar with key examples of early Irish poetry.
• Become familiar with the basics of early Irish mythology.

For the complete syllabus and course calendar, click here.

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555–1  Irish  Maturation  Narratives                                                                  Dr. Dougherty

In the Poblacht na hEireann, the famous proclamation of independence of the 1916 Easter Rising rebels, it was declared that “Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom”; that same year, James Joyce published his Bildungsroman, A  Portrait of  the Artist as a Young Man, a depiction of childhood and adolescence foundational to the modern, and Modernist, coming-of‐age narrative. The maturation narrative is arguably the dominant twentieth‐century fiction genre of Ireland, as the newly‐independent nation itself came of age.  We will consider the links among

Discourses of colonial maturation, in which the maturation of the colonial subject is both necessary and

impossible; nationalist exhortations to the children of Ireland to come of age; the primacy of the coming‐of‐age narrative in twentieth‐century Irish fiction; the salience of gender to, and in, this most important Irish genre.  In this course, then, we will examine the Irish maturation narrative genre, considering each text in its theoretical, historical, social, and political contexts.

REQUIRED TEXTS:

The Wild Irish Girl, Sydney Owenson, edited by Kathryn Kirkpatrick

Phineas Finn, Anthony Trollope,  edited by Jack Berthoud

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde, edited by Camille Cauti

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce, edited by Langdon Hammer

The Country Girls, Edna O’Brien

Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, Roddy Doyle

The Butcher Boy, Patrick McCabe

Down By The River, Edna O’Brien

Are You Somebody? The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman, Nuala O’Faolain

The Dancers Dancing, Eilis Ni Dhuibhne

The Dark, John McGahern

The Gathering, Anne Enright

The Last September, Elizabeth Bowen