Gerry Smyth – författare

This book reconstitutes the category of 'space' as a crucial element within contemporary cultural, literary and historical studies in Ireland.

Music and Irish Identity represents the latest stage in a life-long project for Gerry Smyth, focusing here on the ways in which music engages with particular aspects of Irish identity. The nature of popular music and the Irish identity it supposedly articulates have both undergone profound change in recent years: the first as a result of technological and wider industrial changes in the organisation and dissemination of music as seen, for example, with digital platforms such as YouTube, Spotify and iTunes. A second factor has been Ireland’s spectacular fall from economic grace after the demise of the "Celtic Tiger", and the ensuing crisis of national identity. Smyth argues that if, as the stereotypical association would have it, the Irish have always been a musical race, then that association needs re-examination in the light of developments in relation to both cultural practice and political identity. This book contributes to that process through a series of related case studies that are both scholarly and accessible. Some of the principal ideas broached in the text include the (re-)establishment of music as a key object of Irish cultural studies; the theoretical limitations of traditional musicology; the development of new methodologies specifically designed to address the demands of Irish music in all its aspects; and the impact of economic austerity on musical negotiations of Irish identity. The book will be of seminal importance to all those interested in popular music, cultural studies and the wider fate of Ireland in the twenty-first century.

Passed down in the oral tradition and sung traditionally as working songs, sea shanties tell the human stories of life at sea: hard graft, battling the elements, the loss of ships or pining for a lady on shore.Its pages decorated with hand-drawn or wood-cut illustrations from celebrated artist Jonny Hannah, Sailor Song addresses the current modern revival of sea shanties, and seeks to celebrate and to explore the historical, musical and social history of the traditional sea song through 40 beautiful, mournful, haunting and uplifting shanties.Acclaimed shanty devotee Gerry Smyth presents the background to each one alongside musical notation. The lyrics are elaborated with explanations of terminology, context including historical facts and accounts of life at sea, and the characters, both fictional and non-fictional, that appear in the songs from the great age of sail to the last days of square-rig. Where appropriate, a direct digital link is made to a shanty recording in the British Library Sound Archive.

The sea is beautiful and alluring, but it is also dangerous and deadly. Above all, it is unknowable and untameable. Storytelling offered our ancestors a means to understand and interact with the natural world, and in time these stories coalesced into the mythological systems of the world. And the ocean features in every mythological system in history.To reflect and explore this, Gerry Smyth has gathered together myths and folktales from cultures around the world – Native American, Caribbean, Polynesian, Persian, Indian, Scandinavian and European. Just as these stories have been passed down through generations, he brings his own narrative interpretation with additional discussion on their meaning.Stories are divided into seven sections: Origin Stories; Gods and Humans; Voyages; Lost Places, Imagined Spaces; Weather and Nature; Down to the Sea in Ships; Fabulous Beasts; and embellished with illustrations from the wide-ranging collections of the Library.

The sea is beautiful and alluring, but it is also dangerous and deadly. Above all, it is unknowable and untameable. Storytelling offered our ancestors a means to understand and interact with the natural world, and in time these stories coalesced into the mythological systems of the world. And the ocean features in every mythological system in history.To reflect and explore this, Gerry Smyth has gathered together myths and folktales from cultures around the world Native American, Caribbean, Polynesian, Persian, Indian, Scandinavian and European. Just as these stories have been passed down through generations, he brings his own narrative interpretation with additional discussion on their meaning.Stories are divided into seven sections: Origin Stories; Gods and Humans; Voyages; Lost Places, Imagined Spaces; Weather and Nature; Down to the Sea in Ships; Fabulous Beasts; and embellished with illustrations from the wide-ranging collections of the Library.

Irish mythology comprises a rich and diverse body of stories accumulated over thousands of years in a variety of oral and literary forms. The stories reach back into pre-history, telling of the island’s ‘original’ inhabitants and their relations with a series of invading races throughout what is assumed to be the neolithic, bronze and iron age periods. Preserved in memory by professional castes of druids and bards, the stories survived in oral form until they began to be written down towards the end of the first millennium by monkish clerics keen to establish a narrative of Irish history culminating in Christian hegemony.This new collection rewrites stories from the canon as simply and as accessibly as possible to win a new audience for this wonderful tradition. Such stories will include Deirdre and the Sons of Ulster from the Ulster Cycle and Finn mac Cool and the Salmon of Knowledge from the Fenian Cycle, as well as The Children of Lir and The Coming of Patrick. These stories will be accompanied by commentaries which introduce readers to some of the historical and literary issues attending the survival of the stories, all beautifully illustrated with images from the printed collections of the British Library.

This book argues that modern Irish history encompasses a deep-seated fear of betrayal, and that this fear has been especially prevalent since the revolutionary period at the outset of the twentieth century. The author goes on to argue that the novel is the literary form most apt for the exploration of betrayal in its social, political and psychological dimensions. The significance of this thesis comes into focus in terms of a number of recent developments – most notably, the economic downturn (and the political and civic betrayals implicated therein) and revelations of the Catholic Church’s failure in its pastoral mission. As many observers note, such developments have brought the language of betrayal to the forefront of contemporary Irish life. This book offers a powerful analysis of modern Irish history as regarded from the perspective of some its most incisive minds, including James Joyce, Liam O’Flaherty, Elizabeth Bowen, Francis Stuart, Eugene McCabe and Anne Enright.

Recent developments in Irish literature are largely ignored in existing critical texts on Irish culture. This is the first study to make a detailed examination of the new novelists and themes emerging in the genre, as well as covering the foundations of contemporary Irish fiction. Gerry Smyth provides a broad overview of the forms and theories that comprise the traditional Irish novel and explores the ways in which modern writers challenge established notions of Irish fiction. Focusing on the work of leading contemporary Irish writers – including Roddy Doyle, Glenn Patterson, Emma Donoghue and Patrick McCabe – Smyth employs innovative techniques in his analysis, such as the relevance of post-colonial theory to Irish literature, and the links between literature and wider cultural and political developments. Also included is a previously unpublished interview with Roddy Doyle.

This book investigates the role of literary criticism in the process of Irish decolonisation since the late eighteenth century, with special emphasis on the 1950s. Drawing on the work of both Irish and international commentators – including Edward Said, David Lloyd, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Luke Gibbons – Gerry Smyth seeks to reconfigure the established relations between literature and criticism. Smyth then sets his analysis against a modular theory of decolonisation based on a reading of Irish history from the perspective of contemporary postcolonial and post-structural theory. Engaging with debates in a number of current fields, Decolonisation and Criticism challenges many assumptions and practices of Irish literary history.

This book reconstitutes the category of 'space' as a crucial element within contemporary cultural, literary and historical studies in Ireland.

In this moment of growing anxiety about the environment and the fate of humanity, literature continues its vital role of articulating dynamic new ways of thinking about the relations between humanity, environment and technology. In this book, cultural historian Gerry Smyth focuses on English genre fiction of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, exploring the ways in which popular novelists of the period engaged with debates relating to environment (England), culture (English language and literature) and identity (Englishness). In 16 case studies, the author covers examples of fantasy, science fiction, murder mystery and children’s stories in order to trace the prehistory of modern environmentalism, especially as experienced in a key 50-year period running up to the start of the Second World War.Englishness and Environment in Genre Fiction, 1890-1940 offers new approaches to a variety of well-loved English novels, describing an unlikely but important alternative genealogy for both modern English literature and modern ecocriticism. Case studies include The Island of Dr Moreau, Heart of Darkness, The Wind in the Willows, Cold Comfort Farm, Brave New World and The Hobbit. In these and other popular novels Smyth examines themes such as evolution, industrialisation, the growth of technology, Britain’s fading imperial status, assaults on traditional discourses of class, gender and sexuality, animal rights, artificial intelligence and war. The central focus is on the ways in which popular genre authors responded to a variety of changes that were overtaking the idea of England itself during this period. Accessible and innovative, this book reconfigures modern English literary history from an environmental perspective, insisting that questions of environment were always already embedded in the field of modern cultural debate.

In this moment of growing anxiety about the environment and the fate of humanity, literature continues its vital role of articulating dynamic new ways of thinking about the relations between humanity, environment and technology. In this book, cultural historian Gerry Smyth focuses on English genre fiction of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, exploring the ways in which popular novelists of the period engaged with debates relating to environment (England), culture (English language and literature) and identity (Englishness). In sixteen case studies, the author covers examples of fantasy, science fiction, murder mystery and children’s stories in order to trace the prehistory of modern environmentalism, especially as experienced in a key 50-year period running up to the start of the Second World War.Environment and Genre Fiction, 1890-1940 offers new approaches to a variety of well-loved English novels, seeking and describing an unlikely but important alternative genealogy for both modern English literature and modern ecocriticism. Case studies include The Island of Dr Moreau, Heart of Darkness, The Wind in the Willows, Cold Comfort Farm, Brave New World and The Hobbit. In these and other popular novels Smyth examines themes such as evolution, industrialisation, the growth of technology, Britain’s fading imperial status, assaults on traditional discourses of class, gender and sexuality, animal rights, artificial intelligence and war. The central focus is on the ways in which popular genre authors responded to a variety of changes that were overtaking the idea of England itself during this period. Accessible and innovative, this book reconfigures modern English literary history from an environmental perspective, insisting that questions of environment were always already embedded in the field of modern cultural debate.

Music and Irish Identity represents the latest stage in a life-long project for Gerry Smyth, focusing here on the ways in which music engages with particular aspects of Irish identity. The nature of popular music and the Irish identity it supposedly articulates have both undergone profound change in recent years: the first as a result of technological and wider industrial changes in the organisation and dissemination of music as seen, for example, with digital platforms such as YouTube, Spotify and iTunes. A second factor has been Ireland’s spectacular fall from economic grace after the demise of the "Celtic Tiger", and the ensuing crisis of national identity. Smyth argues that if, as the stereotypical association would have it, the Irish have always been a musical race, then that association needs re-examination in the light of developments in relation to both cultural practice and political identity. This book contributes to that process through a series of related case studies that are both scholarly and accessible. Some of the principal ideas broached in the text include the (re-)establishment of music as a key object of Irish cultural studies; the theoretical limitations of traditional musicology; the development of new methodologies specifically designed to address the demands of Irish music in all its aspects; and the impact of economic austerity on musical negotiations of Irish identity. The book will be of seminal importance to all those interested in popular music, cultural studies and the wider fate of Ireland in the twenty-first century.

This book argues that modern Irish history encompasses a deep-seated fear of betrayal, and that this fear has been especially prevalent since the revolutionary period at the outset of the twentieth century. The author goes on to argue that the novel is the literary form most apt for the exploration of betrayal in its social, political and psychological dimensions. The significance of this thesis comes into focus in terms of a number of recent developments – most notably, the economic downturn (and the political and civic betrayals implicated therein) and revelations of the Catholic Church’s failure in its pastoral mission. As many observers note, such developments have brought the language of betrayal to the forefront of contemporary Irish life. This book offers a powerful analysis of modern Irish history as regarded from the perspective of some of its most incisive minds, including James Joyce, Liam O’Flaherty, Elizabeth Bowen, Francis Stuart, Eugene McCabe and Anne Enright.

Music and Sound in the Life and Literature of James Joyce: Joyces Noyces offers a fresh perspective on the Irish writer James Joyce’s much-noted obsession with music.