Anthem Irish Studies – serie

Ireland’s Great Famine or ‘an Gorta Mór’ (1845–51) and Ukraine’s ‘Holodomor’ (1932–33) occupy central places in the national historiographies of their respective countries. Acknowledging that questions of collective memory have become a central issue in cultural studies, this volume inquires into the role of historical experiences of hunger and deprivation within the emerging national identities and national historical narratives of Ireland and Ukraine. In the Irish case, a solid body of research has been compiled over the last 150 years, while Ukraine’s Holodomor, by contrast, was something of an open secret that historians could only seriously research after the demise of communist rule. This volume is the first attempt to draw these approaches together and to allow for a comparative study of how the historical experiences of famine were translated into narratives that supported political claims for independent national statehood in Ireland and Ukraine. Juxtaposing studies on the Irish and Ukrainian cases written by eminent historians, political scientists, and literary and film scholars, the essays in this interdisciplinary volume analyse how national historical narratives were constructed and disseminated – whether or not they changed with circumstances, or were challenged by competing visions, both academic and non-academic. In doing so, the essays discuss themes such as representation, commemoration and mediation, and the influence of these processes on the shaping of cultural memory.

‘P. S. O'Hegarty (1879-1955)’ provides an informative and lively biography of the Irish nationalist P.S. O'Hegarty, a major historical figure in the modern separatist movement. At the same time the book explores important issues within nationalism and Irish history, such as what is meant by 'nation' and national identity, cultural and political tolerance, Republican Liberalism, and the nature (as well as the clash) of religion and state.

Modernist Afterlives in Irish Literature and Culture explores manifestations of the themes, forms, and practices of high modernism in Irish literature and culture produced subsequent to this influential movement. Modernist Afterlives in Irish Literature and Culture closely examines how Irish writers and artists from the mid-twentieth century onwards grapple with the legacies bequeathed by modernism and seek to forge new modes of expression for modern and contemporary culture.

Irish author (Eleanor) Norah Hoult (1898–1984) travelled in prominent literary circles and corresponded actively with some of the leading Irish authors of the early twentieth century, including James Stephens, Brigid Brophy, Sean O’Casey and Sean O’Faolain. Despite her reputation and a forty-four year publishing career, Hoult’s oeuvre remains surprisingly neglected. This edition seeks to rectify that critical oversight by introducing Hoult’s short story collection ‘Poor Women!’ to a new generation of readers. Hoult is often compared to writers such as Kate O’Brien and Edna O’Brien for her representations of the oppressive facets of Catholicism. Less explored is her engagement with emotional paralysis and her detailed representations of widowhood and urban settings, inviting comparison to literary giants James Joyce and Mary Lavin. These similarities offer venues for further study.

Modernist Afterlives in Irish Literature and Culture explores manifestations of the themes, forms, and practices of high modernism in Irish literature and culture produced subsequent to this influential movement. Modernist Afterlives in Irish Literature and Culture closely examines how Irish writers and artists from the mid-twentieth century onwards grapple with the legacies bequeathed by modernism and seek to forge new modes of expression for modern and contemporary culture.

Irish author (Eleanor) Norah Hoult (1898–1984) travelled in prominent literary circles and corresponded actively with some of the leading Irish authors of the early twentieth century, including James Stephens, Brigid Brophy, Sean O’Casey and Sean O’Faolain. Despite her reputation and a forty-four year publishing career, Hoult’s oeuvre remains surprisingly neglected. This edition seeks to rectify that critical oversight by introducing Hoult’s short story collection ‘Poor Women!’ to a new generation of readers. Hoult is often compared to writers such as Kate O’Brien and Edna O’Brien for her representations of the oppressive facets of Catholicism. Less explored is her engagement with emotional paralysis and her detailed representations of widowhood and urban settings, inviting comparison to literary giants James Joyce and Mary Lavin. These similarities offer venues for further study.

The Varieties of Joycean Experience is a collection of ten essays that display the wide range and diversity of perspectives and critical approaches that can be drawn upon to enrich our readings of James Joyce’s works. With special attention to Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, these essays explore such problems as the difficulties these books pose to categories and summaries and our understanding of Joyce’s composition methods. The book explores Joyce’s ambiguities around death, scatology, and the weather to propose new understandings of these phenomena as key ways into Joyce’s works. The book concludes with an examination of the tricky problem: what makes an interpretation untenable, and why do Joyce’s works inspire far-fetched and even crackpot readings?

This collection of essays explores digital art in Ireland. Comprising contributions from EL Putnam, Anne Karhio, Ken Keating, Conor McGarrigle, Kieran Nolan, Claire Fitch, Kirstie North and Chris Clarke, it examines how new media technologies are shaping the island’s contemporary artistic practices. As one of the first dedicated culture-specific treatments of Irish digital art, it fills a major gap in the national media archaeology of Ireland, engaging with a range of topics, including electronic literature, video games and the data-city.

This volume proposes to honor the trenchant, influential scholarship of Professor Margot Norris in essays that amplify her illumination of Joyce’s oeuvre. The common denominator running through her work is her openness to Joyce’s various modes of innovation; she pioneered alternative ways of regarding his fiction, the readers it addresses, the narrative and generic forms it alters, the world to which it refers, and the nature of the socio-historical status quo it exposes. These categories anchor and organize the collection: Joyce’s textual plurivalence, formal innovations, possible worlds, emergent histories (including those of women), and variegated readerships.

The Great Irish Famine claimed the lives of one million people, mainly from the lower classes. More than a million others fled the stricken land between 1845 and 1851. In recent decades, its history has become the focus of considerable scholarly and popular attention, but much remains to be retrieved and reconstructed, particularly at the level of the rural poor. This book fills that gap. It is based on a large volume of reports on social conditions in the Irish localities, emanating from within those localities, that has never been used systematically by historians. It bears the compelling title of the ‘Death Census’. Most historians are simply unaware of its existence. The outstanding feature of the Death Census is that it was authored by local clergymen who lived among the people they served and were intimately involved with their lives. This book brings the Death Census together in composite form for the first time and provides a detailed examination of its contents. The result is new understanding of the Great Famine as it was experienced on the ground.

This volume proposes to honor the trenchant, influential scholarship of Professor Margot Norris in essays that amplify her illumination of Joyce’s oeuvre. The common denominator running through her work is her openness to Joyce’s various modes of innovation; she pioneered alternative ways of regarding his fiction, the readers it addresses, the narrative and generic forms it alters, the world to which it refers, and the nature of the socio-historical status quo it exposes. These categories anchor and organize the collection: Joyce’s textual plurivalence, formal innovations, possible worlds, emergent histories (including those of women), and variegated readerships.

The Great Irish Famine claimed the lives of one million people, mainly from the lower classes. More than a million others fled the stricken land between 1845 and 1851. In recent decades, its history has become the focus of considerable scholarly and popular attention, but much remains to be retrieved and reconstructed, particularly at the level of the rural poor. This book fills that gap. It is based on a large volume of reports on social conditions in the Irish localities, emanating from within those localities, that has never been used systematically by historians. It bears the compelling title of the ‘Death Census’. Most historians are simply unaware of its existence. The outstanding feature of the Death Census is that it was authored by local clergymen who lived among the people they served and were intimately involved with their lives. This book brings the Death Census together in composite form for the first time and provides a detailed examination of its contents. The result is new understanding of the Great Famine as it was experienced on the ground.

The Varieties of Joycean Experience is a collection of ten essays that display the wide range and diversity of perspectives and critical approaches that can be drawn upon to enrich our readings of James Joyce’s works. With special attention to Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, these essays explore such problems as the difficulties these books pose to categories and summaries and our understanding of Joyce’s composition methods. The book explores Joyce’s ambiguities around death, scatology, and the weather to propose new understandings of these phenomena as key ways into Joyce’s works. The book concludes with an examination of the tricky problem: what makes an interpretation untenable, and why do Joyce’s works inspire far-fetched and even crackpot readings?

Based on the accounts of British and Anglo-Irish travelers, ‘Creating  Irish Tourism’ charts the development of tourism in Ireland from its origins in the mid-eighteenth century to the country's emergence as a major European tourist destination a century later. The work shows how the Irish tourist experience evolved out of the interactions among travel writers, landlords, and visitors with the peasants who, as guides, jarvies, venders, porters and beggars, were as much a part of Irish tourism as the scenery itself.