Readers often have regarded with curiosity the creative life of the poet. In this study, David Bethea illustrates the relation between the art and life of 19th-century poet Alexander Pushkin, the central figure in Russian thought and culture. Bethea shows how Pushkin, on the eve of this 200th anniversary, still speaks to our time. He indicates how we, as modern readers, might realize the promethean metaphors central to the poet's intensely sculpted life. The Pushkin who emerges from Bethea's portrait is one who, long unknown to English-language readers, closely resembles the original both psychologically and artistically.

American literature and Irish culture, 1910–55: The politics of enchantment discusses how and why American modernist writers turned to Ireland at various stages during their careers. By placing events such as the Celtic Revival and the Easter Rising at the centre of the discussion, it shows how Irishness became a cultural determinant in the work of American modernists. It is the first study to extend the analysis of Irish influence on American literature beyond racial, ethnic or national frameworks. Through close readings and archival research, American literature and Irish culture, 1910–55 provides a balanced and structured approach to the study of the complexities of American modernist writers’ responses to Ireland. Offering new readings of familiar literary figures – including Fitzgerald, Moore, O’Neill, Steinbeck and Stevens – it makes for essential reading for students and academics working on twentieth-century American and Irish literature and culture, and transatlantic studies.

This book offers fresh critical interpretation of two of the central tenets of Irish culture – migration and memory. From its starting point with the ‘New Irish’ generation of poets in the United States during the 1980s and concluding with the technological innovations of 21st-century poetry, this study spans continents, generations, genders and sexualities to reconsider the role of memory and of migration in the work of a range of contemporary Irish poets. Combining sensitive close readings and textual analysis with thorough theoretical application, it sets out the formal, thematic, socio-cultural and literary contexts of migration as an essential aspect of Irish literature. This book is essential reading for literary critics, academics, cultural commentators and students with an interest in contemporary poetry, Irish studies, diaspora studies and memory studies.

1. 2 Culture and Identity in a Postmodern World Michel Foucault’s statement that: “The present epoch will perhaps be above all the epoch of space. We are in the epoch of simultaneity; we are in the epoch of juxtaposition” (M. Foucault 1986: 22) heralded a new approach to identity in the contemporary world by suggesting that one’s identity is formed not as a result of the cultural and national values and history one has inherited, but rather as a result of the different spaces through which one travels. In other words, one’s identity is no longer perceived as an inherited construct but rather as something flexible that changes as one moves through the more fluid spaces of the contemporary, globalized world and internalizes a mixture of the different cultures and ideas that one encounters. The idealized contemporary traveller will thus effortlessly cross national and cultural borders and negotiate a constantly changing and flexible identity for himself. Andy Bennett argues that it is no longer even possible to conceive of identity as a static entity, forged from a communal history and value system, because all of the traditional certainties on which identity formation were based in the past have been fatally undermined by a postmodernist flux and fluidity: “Once clearly demarcated by relatively static and ethnically homogenous communities, the ‘spaces’ and ‘places’ of everyday life are now highly pluralistic and contested, and are constantly being defined and redefined through processes of relocation and cultural hybridisation” (A.

In this powerful and authoritative study Jody Allen Randolph providesthe fullest account yet of the work of a major figure in twentieth-century Irish literature as well as in contemporary women’s writing. Eavan Boland’s achievement in changing the map of Irish poetry is tracked and analyzed from her first poems to the present. The book traces the evolution of that achievement, guiding the reader through Boland’s early attachment to Yeats, her growing unease with the absence of women’s writing, her encounter with pioneering American poets like Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Bishop, and Adrienne Rich, and her eventual, challenging amendments in poetry and prose to Ireland’s poetic tradition. Using research from private papers the book also traces a time of upheaval and change in Ireland, exploring Boland's connection to Mary Robinson, in a chapter that details the nexus of a woman president and a woman poet in a country that was resistant to both. Finally, this book invites the reader to share a compelling perspective on the growth of a poet described by one critic as Ireland’s “first great woman poet.”

Although much has been written about American feminism and its influence on culture and society, very little has been recorded about the key role played by Irish American women writers in exposing women’s issues, protecting their rights, and anticipating, if not effecting, change. Like the mythical Irish banshee who delivered fore-warnings of imminent death, Irish American women, through their writing, have repeatedly warned of the death of women’s rights. These messages carried the greatest potency at liminal times when feminism was under attack due to the politics of civil society, the government, or the church. The Banshees traces the feminist contributions of a wide range of Irish American women writers, from Mother Jones, Kate Chopin, and Margaret Mitchell to contemporary authors such as Gillian Flynn, Jennifer Egan, and Doris Kearns Goodwin. To illustrate the growth and significance of their writing, the book is organized chronologically by decade. Each chapter details the progress and setbacks of Irish American women during that period by revealing key themes in their novels and memoirs contextualized within a discussion of contemporary feminism, Catholicism, Irish American history, American politics, and society. The Banshees examines these writers’ roles in protecting women’s sovereignty, rights, and reputations. Thanks to their efforts, feminism is revealed as a fundamental element of Irish American literary history.

The expansion of the British Empire during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries created the greatest mass migration in human history, in which the Irish and Scots played a central, complex, and controversial role. The essays in this volume explore the diverse encounters Irish and Scottish migrants had with Indigenous peoples in North America and Australasia. The Irish and Scots were among the most active and enthusiastic participants in what one contributor describes as "the greatest single period of land theft, cultural pillage, and casual genocide in world history." At the same time, some settlers attempted to understand Indigenous society rather than destroy it, while others incorporated a romanticized view of Natives into a radical critique of European society, and others still empathized with Natives as fellow victims of imperialism. These essays investigate the extent to which the condition of being Irish and Scottish affected settlers' attitudes to Indigenous peoples, and examine the political, social, religious, cultural, and economic dimensions of their interactions. Presenting a variety of viewpoints, the editors reach the provocative conclusion that the Scottish and Irish origins of settlers were less important in determining attitudes and behaviour than were the specific circumstances in which those settlers found themselves at different times and places in North America, Australia and New Zealand. Contributors include Donald Harman Akenson (Queen's), John Eastlake (College Cork), Marjory Harper (Aberdeen), Andrew Hinson (Toronto), Michele Holmgren (Mount Royal), Kevin Hutchings (Northern British Columbia), Anne Lederman (Royal Conservatory of Music), Patricia A. McCormack (Alberta), Mark G. McGowan (Toronto), Ann McGrath (Australian National), Cian T. McMahon (Nevada), Graeme Morton (Guelph), Michael Newton (Xavier), Pádraig Ó Siadhail (Saint Mary's), Brad Patterson (Victoria University of Wellington), Beverly Soloway (Lakehead), and David A. Wilson (Toronto).