This collection charts the vital contextual backgrounds to James Joyce's life and writing. The essays collectively show how Joyce was rooted in his times, how he is both a product and a critic of his multiple contexts, and how important he remains to the world of literature, criticism and culture.

Selina Guinness (Dun Laoghaire) Ireland through the stereoscope: reading the cultural politics of theosophy in the Irish Literary Revival Leeann Lane DCU) 'There are compensations in the congested districts for their poverty': � and the idealized peasant of the agricultural co-operative movement Liam MacMath�na (DCU) From manuscripts to street signs via S�adna: the Gaelic League and the changing role of literacy in Irish, 1875-1915 "na N� Bhroim�il (Mary Immac.) American influence on the Gaelic League: inspiration or control? Mary Stakelum (UL) A song to sweeten Ireland's wrong: music education and the Celtic Revival Elizabeth Crooke (UU) Revivalist archaeology and museum politics during the Irish Revival Janice Helland (Queen's, King.) Embroidered spectacle: Celtic Revival as aristocratic display Elaine Cheasley Paterson (QUB) Crafting a national identity: the Dun Emer Guild, 1902-8 Marnie Hay (UCD) Explaining Uladh: cultural nationalism in Ulster Lucy McDiarmid (Villanova U) Revivalist belligerence: three controversies Alex Davis (UCC) Whoops from the peat-bog?: Joseph Campbell and the London avant-garde Maria O'Brien (UU) Thomas William Rolleston: the forgotten man G.K. Peatling (Guelph U) Robert Lynd, paradox and the Irish revival: 'Acting-out' or 'Working-through'? Brian Griffin (Bath Spa) The Revival at local level: Katherine Frances Purdon's portrayal of rural Ireland Michael McAteer A currency crisis: modernist dialectics in The Countess Cathleen Mary Burke (QUB) Eighteenth-century European scholarship and nineteenth-century Irish literature: Synge's Tinker's Wedding and the orientalizing of 'Irish Gypsies' Patrick Lonergan (NUIG) 'The sneering, lofty conception of what they call culture': O'Casey, popular culture and the Literary Revival

The Gaelic Revival has long fascinated scholars of political history, nationalism, literature, and theater history, yet studies of the period have neglected a significant dimension of Ireland's evolution into nationhood: the cultural crusades mounted by those who believed in the centrality of the Irish language to the emergent Irish state. This book attempts to remedy that deficiency and to present the lively debates within the language movement in their full complexity, citing documents such as editorials, columns, speeches, letters, and literary works that were influential at the time but all too often were published only in Irish or were difficult to access. Cautiously employing the terms "nativist" and "progressive" for the turnings inward and toward the European continent manifested in different authors, this study examines the strengths and weaknesses of contrasting positions on the major issues confronting the language movement. Moving from the early collecting or retelling of folklore through the search for heroes in early Irish history to the reworking of ancient Irish literary materials by retelling it in modern vernacular Irish, O'Leary addresses the many debates and questions concerning Irish writing of the period. His study is a model for inquiries into the kind of linguistic-literary movement that arises during intense nationalism.

Handbook of the Irish Revival collects for the first time many of the essays, articles, and letters written during the Revival.

This book is the first comprehensive critical assessment of the aesthetic and social ideals of Lady Augusta Gregory, founder, patron, director, and dramatist of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. It elaborates on her distinctive vision of the social role of a National Theatre in Ireland, especially in relation to the various reform movements of her age: the Pre-Raphaelite Movement, the Co-operative Movement, and the Home Industries Movement. It illustrates the impact of John Ruskin on the aesthetic and social ideals of Lady Gregory and her circle that included Horace Plunkett, George Russell, John Millington Synge, William Butler Yeats, and George Bernard Shaw. All of these friends visited the celebrated Gregory residence of Coole Park in Country Galway, most famously Yeats. The study thus provides a pioneering evaluation of Ruskin’s immense influence on artistic, social, and political discourse in Ireland in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

From the foreword: "A sensitive recuperation of a past cultural moment and a contribution to our current one, Mishkin's study both participates in our present national conversation and prepares the way for future ones." "Looks at literary movements on two different continents and from two different periods . . . and finds significant parallels and interrelations between them. The effect is to illuminate both. There is no other study like it, on this scale."--Richard Bizot, University of North Florida Drawing fascinating comparisons between two literary movements for social justice, Tracy Mishkin explores the link between the Irish Renaissance that began in the 1880s and the African-American movement of the 1920s known as the Harlem Renaissance. Starting with evidence that Ireland's Abbey Theatre tours of the United States before World War I influenced such African-Americans as Alain Locke and James Weldon Johnson, Mishkin offers the first full-scale discussion of the historical similarities and differences of the two movements. Both rose from the ashes of history--from people suffering years of oppression during which their native languages were lost or stolen--to confront issues of language and identity; and both had to combat negative mainstream representation of their people, all the while debating how to create their own literature. Included throughout is the work of women who participated in both movements but who often have been marginalized in their histories. Going beyond national boundaries, Mishkin takes the study of interracial literary influence across the Atlantic and establishes important parallels between the Harlem and Irish Renaissances. Tracy Mishkin is assistant professor of English at Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville, and editor of Literary Influence and African-American Writers.

Irish and English on opposite pages - I Being chapter VI of the Songs of Connacht, now for the first time collected, edited and translated - II Being chapter VII of the Songs of Connacht, now for the first time collected, edited, and translated Vol 1 is paperback edn and vol 2 is hard back.