Irish Pastoral Nostalgia in Twentieth-Century Irish Literature

by Frawley, Oona

• ISBN13: 9780716533221
• ISBN10: 0716533227
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-05-01
• Publisher: Irish Academic Press

Summary

Spanning anonymous eighth century poems to the writing of contemporary authors like Seamus Heaney and Eaven Boland, Irish literature has consistently engaged with nature, place and landscape. Irish Pastoral offers an exemplary probe into this Irish literary tradition that has been much remarked upon but little analysed. While rooted in a thorough knowledge of the classical pastoral tradition as shaped by Theocritus and Virgil, the Irish pastoral mode displays a heightened sense of the nostalgia usually associated with pastoral. From approximately the thirteenth century on, Irish literature displays a preoccupation with nature as the site for nostalgia; Irish Pastoral argues that this preoccupation becomes increasingly linked with the fact of the British colonial presence in Ireland. After offering an overview of the representation of nature in Irish literature prior to 1600, this book examines the collision between Irish and English pastoral forms during Spenser's time in Ireland, and then seeks to ascertain the ways in which these two literary modes subsequently intertwine as a seeming result of the consolidation of English colonial dominance of Ireland. This merging and blending of English and Irish pastoral forms is best witnessed in the period of the Irish Revival and in the literature that follows; Irish Pastoral then examines some of the major figures of twentieth century Irish literature for the inheritance of these themes.

Author Biography

Oona Frawley is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Irish Studies, Queen's University, Belfast. She has taught at University College, Dublin.

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS	vii
Introduction Irish Pastoral: The Nostalgic Mode	1	(7)
1 Nature in Irish Literature Before 1600: An Overview	8	(27)
2 The Roots of the New Irish Pastoral	35	(22)
3 Yeats: Mapping the New Ireland of the Mind	57	(24)
4 Synge, The Aran Islands, and the Move Towards Realism	81	(23)
5 Joyce and Beckett: Refuting Stereotypes	104	(32)
6 Contemporary Versions of Irish Pastoral: Heaney and Boland	136	(20)
Postscript Pastoral Speculations	156	(3)
Notes	159	(28)
References	187	(12)
Index	199