Celtic modernism had a complex history with classical reception. In this book, Gregory Baker examines the work of W. B. Yeats, James Joyce, David Jones and Hugh MacDiarmid to show how new forms of modernist literary expression emerged as the evolution of classical education, the insurgent power of cultural nationalisms and the desire for transformative modes of artistic invention converged across Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Writers on the 'Celtic fringe' sometimes confronted, and sometimes consciously advanced, crudely ideological manipulations of the inherited past. But even as they did so, their eccentric ways of using the classics and its residual cultural authority animated new decentered idioms of English - literary vernaculars so fragmented and inflected by polyglot intrusion that they expanded the range of Anglophone literature and left in their wake compelling stories for a new age.

Celtic modernism had a complex history with classical reception. In this book, Gregory Baker examines the work of W. B. Yeats, James Joyce, David Jones and Hugh MacDiarmid to show how new forms of modernist literary expression emerged as the evolution of classical education, the insurgent power of cultural nationalisms and the desire for transformative modes of artistic invention converged across Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Writers on the 'Celtic fringe' sometimes confronted, and sometimes consciously advanced, crudely ideological manipulations of the inherited past. But even as they did so, their eccentric ways of using the classics and its residual cultural authority animated new decentered idioms of English - literary vernaculars so fragmented and inflected by polyglot intrusion that they expanded the range of Anglophone literature and left in their wake compelling stories for a new age.

Examines the role that spectators play in the reception and perpetuation of ableist stereotypes about blindness in the theatre.

The Roman tradition represents civil war as a political matter that cuts to the heart of family, sexuality, and society.

A celebration of the tenacious life of the enduring Irish classics, this book by one of Irish writing's most eloquent readers offers a brilliant and accessible survey of the greatest works since 1600 in Gaelic and English, which together have shaped one of the world's most original literary cultures. In the course of his discussion of the great seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Gaelic poems of dispossession, and of later work in that language that refuses to die, Declan Kiberd provides vivid and idiomatic translations that bring the Irish texts alive for the English-speaking reader. Extending from the Irish poets who confronted modernity as a cataclysm, and who responded by using traditional forms in novel and radical ways, to the great modern practitioners of such paradoxically conservative and revolutionary writing, Kiberd's work embraces three sorts of Irish classics: those of awesome beauty and internal rigor, such as works by the Gaelic bards, Yeats, Synge, Beckett, and Joyce; those that generate a myth so powerful as to obscure the individual writer and unleash an almost superhuman force, such as the Cuchulain story, the lament for Art O'Laoghaire, and even Dracula; and those whose power exerts a palpable influence on the course of human action, such as Swift's Drapier's Letters, the speeches of Edmund Burke, or the autobiography of Wolfe Tone. The book closes with a moving and daring coda on the Anglo-Irish agreement, claiming that the seeds of such a settlement were sown in the works of Irish literature. A delight to read throughout, Irish Classics is a fitting tribute to the works it reads so well and inspires us to read, and read again.

Offers a bold new argument about how Irish, American and Caribbean modernisms helped remake the twentieth-century world literary system.

An examination of the emergence, reception and legacy of modernism in Ireland. Engaging with the ongoing re-evaluation of regional and national modernisms, the essays collected here reveal both the importance of modernism to Ireland, and that of Ireland to modernism. This collection introduces fresh perspectives on modern Irish culture that reflect new understandings of the contradictory and contested nature of modernism itself.--

This collection addresses how models from ancient Greece and Rome have permeated Irish political discourse in the century since 1916. The 1916 Easter Rising, when Irish nationalists rose up against British imperial forces, became almost instantly mythologized in Irish political memory as a turning point in the nation's history that paved the way for Irish independence. Its centenary has provided a natural point for reflection on Irish politics, and this volume highlights an unexplored element in Irish political discourse, namely its frequent reliance on, reference to, and tensions with classical Greek and Roman models. Topics covered include the reception and rejection of classical culture in Ireland; the politics of Irish language engagement with Greek and Roman models; the intersection of Irish literature with scholarship in Classics and Celtic Studies; the use of classical referents to articulate political inequalities across gender, sexual, and class hierarchies; meditations on the Northern Irish conflict through classical literature; and the political implications of neoclassical material culture in Irish society. As the only country colonized by Britain with a pre-existing indigenous heritage of expertise in classical languages and literature, postcolonial Ireland represents a unique case in the field of classical reception. This book opens a window on a rich and varied dialogue between significant figures in Irish cultural history and the Greek and Roman sources that have inspired them, a dialogue that is firmly rooted in Ireland's historical past and continues to be ever-evolving.

Commonwealth of Letters examines midcentury literary institutions integral to modernism and postcolonial writing. Several organizations central to interwar modernism, such as the BBC, influential publishers, and university English departments, became important sites in the emergence of postcolonial literature after the war. How did some of modernism's leading figures of the 1930s-such as T.S. Eliot, Louis MacNeice, and Stephen Spender-come to admire late colonial and early postcolonial literature in the 1950s? Similarly, why did late colonial and early postcolonial writers-including Chinua Achebe, Kamau Brathwaite, Claude McKay, and Ngugi wa Thiong'o-actively seek alliances with metropolitan intellectuals? Peter Kalliney's original and extensive archival work on modernist cultural institutions demonstrates that this disparate group of intellectuals had strong professional incentives to treat one another more as fellow literary professionals, and less as political or cultural antagonists. Surprisingly, metropolitan intellectuals and their late colonial counterparts leaned heavily on modernist theories of aesthetic autonomy to facilitate their collaborative ventures. For white, metropolitan writers, T.S. Eliot's notion of impersonality could help recruit new audiences and conspirators from colonized regions of the world. For black, colonial writers, aesthetic autonomy could be used to imagine a literary sphere uniquely resistant to the forms of racial prejudice endemic to the colonial system. This strategic collaboration did not last forever, but as Commonwealth of Letters shows, it left a lasting imprint on the ultimate disposition of modernism and the evolution of postcolonial literature.