Ã?Â?Ã?«A book edited by two such distinguished historians as James S. Donnelly Jr., and Kerby A. Miller promises to be lively and important: this collection of ten essays fully lives up to the expectations raised by the editorial imprimatur. The articles by an impressive panel of authors are source-based, and the tight editorial control is reflected in the way in which they complement one another.Ã?Â?Ã?Â- American Historical Review

The first of its kind, Irish Folklore is a key text that uses Nordic ethnography methods and Latin American culture theory to explain how differing groups legitimise their own identities by identifying with notions drawn from folklore.

Written from the perspective of a scholar and performer, Traditional Music and Irish Society investigates the relation of traditional music to Irish modernity. The opening chapter integrates a thorough survey of the early sources of Irish music with recent work on Irish social history in the eighteenth century to explore the question of the antiquity of the tradition and the class locations of its origins. Dowling argues in the second chapter that the formation of what is today called Irish traditional music occurred alongside the economic and political modernization of European society in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Dowling goes on to illustrate the public discourse on music during the Irish revival in newspapers and journals from the 1880s to the First World War, also drawing on the works of Pierre Bourdieu and Jacques Lacan to place the field of music within the public sphere of nationalist politics and cultural revival in these decades. The situation of music and song in the Irish literary revival is then reflected and interpreted in the life and work of James Joyce, and Dowling includes treatment of Joyce’s short stories A Mother and The Dead and the 'Sirens' chapter of Ulysses. Dowling conducted field work with Northern Irish musicians during 2004 and 2005, and also reflects directly on his own experience performing and working with musicians and arts organizations in order to conclude with an assessment of the current state of traditional music and cultural negotiation in Northern Ireland in the second decade of the twenty-first century.

This book surveys Irish writing in English over the last two centuries, from Maria Edgeworth to Seamus Heaney, to give the literary student and the general reader an up-to-date sense of its variety and vitality and to indicate some of the ways in which it has been described and discussed. It begins with a brief outline of Irish history, of Irish writing in Irish and Latin, and of writing in English before 1800. Later chapters consider Irish romanticism, Victorian Ireland, W.B.Yeats and the Irish Literary Revival, new directions in Irish writing after Joyce and the literature of contemporary Ireland, north and south, from 1960 to the present.

This volume explores the cultural, literary, theatrical, and political changes in Irish society from 1980. The so-called ‘Celtic Tiger’ brought about cultural and economic rejuvenation in Ireland but this new found confidence and prosperity was destabilised by other events, such as the scandals in the Catholic Church, bringing into question the role of traditional institutions in contemporary Irish life. The ending of the Troubles and signing of the Good Friday Agreement similarly heralded a new era in terms of positive political change, but recent paramilitary activity threatens to undermine the progress made in the 1990s, as waves of new violence hit the North. Equally, recent economic recession has halted the radical growth seen in the Republic over recent decades. This book therefore problematises the concept of change and progress by juxtaposing these events, and asking what real changes can be traced in modern Ireland. The contributors frequently reflect on the changes and upheavals this period of dramatic economic, political and cultural change has prompted. The volume includes contributions from the fields of politics, cultural studies, sport, history, geography, media and film studies, and theatre and literature. As such it is a decidedly interdisciplinary study, exploring wide-ranging topics and issues relevant to contemporary Irish Studies.

This is the first history of sport in Ireland, locating the history of sport within Irish political, social, and cultural history, and within the global history of sport. Sport and Ireland demonstrates that there are aspects of Ireland's sporting history that are uniquely Irish and are defined by the peculiarities of life on a small island on the edge of Europe. What is equally apparent, though, is that the Irish sporting world is unique only in part; much of the history of Irish sport is a shared history with that of other societies. Drawing on an unparalleled range of sources - government archives, sporting institutions, private collections, and more than sixty local, national, and international newspapers - this volume offers a unique insight into the history of the British Empire in Ireland and examines the impact that political partition has had on the organization of sport there. Paul Rouse assesses the relationship between sport and national identity, how sport influences policy-making in modern states, and the ways in which sport has been colonized by the media and has colonized it in turn. Each chapter of Sport and Ireland contains new research on the place of sport in Irish life: the playing of hurling matches in London in the eighteenth century, the growth of cricket to become the most important sport in early Victorian Ireland, and the enlistment of thousands of members of the Gaelic Athletic Association as soldiers in the British Army during the Great War. Rouse draws out the significance of animals to the Irish sporting tradition, from the role of horse and dogs in racing and hunting, to the cocks, bulls, and bears that were involved in fighting and baiting.

This study offers a radical reassessment of a crucial period of political and cultural history. By looking at some 400 songs, many of which are made available to hear, and at their writers, singers, and audiences, it questions both our relationship with song, and ordinary Britons' relationship with Napoleon, the war, and the idea of Britain itself.