THE GREAT WAR IN IRISH POETRY by Fran Brearton ( 9780199261383 )

Item Details

Title:

THE GREAT WAR IN IRISH POETRY
W. B. YEATS TO MICHAEL LONGLEY

By:

Fran Brearton

Format:

Paperback

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£56.00

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£54.32

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3% off

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£1.68

ISBN 10:

0199261385

ISBN 13:

9780199261383

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Publisher:

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Pub. date:

6 February, 2003

Pages:

328

Description:

This book explores the historical background to Irish participation in the Great War, and the ways in which issues raised in 1914-18 still reverberate in contemporary Northern Ireland. The complications of Irish politics are such that Irish memory of the Great War has often been repressed. Nevertheless, Irish writers throughout the century have been preoccupied with the events and images of the Great War. The work of the Irish poets discussed here - from W. B.Yeats and Ireland's soldier-poets through to Seamus Heaney and contemporary Northern Irish writing - challenges reductive versions of history, and of the literary canon, in relation to Ireland and the First World War.

Synopsis:

The Great War in Irish Poetry explores the impact of the First World War on the work of W. B. Yeats, Robert Graves, and Louis MacNeice in the period 1914-45, and on three contemporary Northern Irish poets, Derek Mahon, Seamus Heaney, and Michael Longley. Its concern is to place their work, and memory of the Great War, in the context of Irish politics and culture in the twentieth century. The historical background to Irish involvement in the Great War is explained, as are the ways in which issues raised in 1912-20 still reverberate in the politics of remembrance in Northern Ireland, particularly through such events as the Home Rule cause, the loss of the Titanic, the Battle of the Somme, the Easter Rising. While the Great War is perceived as central to English culture, and its literature holds a privileged position in the English literary canon, the centrality of the Great War to Irish writing has seldom been recognised. This book shows first, that despite complications in Irish domestic politics which led to the repression of memory of the Great War, Irish poets have been drawn throughout the century to the events and images of 1914-18.This engagement is particularly true of those writing in the 'troubled' Northern Ireland of the last thirty years. The second main concern is the extent to which recognition of the importance of the Great War in Irish writing has itself become a casualty of competing versions of the literary canon.

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Imprint:

Oxford University Press

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