Dr. Aidan O’Malley, visiting lecturer
Subject: Modern literature
Course title: Irish culture
ECTS credits: 6
Language: English
Duration: 1 semester
Nastava u ovome kolegiju odvijat će se kumulativno kroz dva mjeseca (od 13.10. do 13.12. 2014.). Stoga, premda je u fakultetskom rasporedu naznačeno da se radi o dvjema grupama, zapravo je riječ o jednoj grupi studenata koji nastavu pohađaju u oba navedena termina.
Status: elective
Course type: lectures, seminars
Prerequisites: enrolment in 3rd / 5th semester
Course requirements:
- 10-15 minute oral presentation
- Mid-term exam (you are not permitted to answer a question on the text you presented)
- Final exam (you are not permitted to answer a question on the text you presented)
- 1,500-2,000 word essay based on your presentation. Plagiarism will result in a fail grade.
- Attendance and participation in class
Course description: This course provides an overview of Irish history, politics, literature and culture more generally, with the focus on the period from the late-nineteenth century to the present. Particular attention is paid to the intersections of political and cultural impulses that led to the creation of the two states in the twentieth century—the Republic and Northern Ireland—and to understanding how both subsequently operated as states. To do this, the course explores how ideas of what constituted Irish identity have been proposed, have come to assume hegemonic force, have been debated and resisted through political and cultural activities, as well as through modes of historical interpretation.
Objective: The course intends to further students’ skills in understanding how literary and other cultural texts interact with political and historical events. To this end, students will be introduced to some of the major texts in twentieth-century Irish literature and history. They will also be introduced to some of the major debates in Irish Studies such as postcolonialism, revisionism and nationalism.
Syllabus:
Session 1: Outlining the course and organisation of presentations
Session 2: Locating Ireland
Overview of Irish history and culture up to the 19th century
Session 3: Colonialism and Nationalism
Lecture: 19th-century Irish nationalism
Seminar: The Famine; Celticism; Cultural nationalism
Session 4: The Literary Revival
Lecture: The Revival and the founding of the Abbey Theatre
Seminar: W.B. Yeats, Cathleen Ni Houlihan; On Baile’s Strand
Session 5: The Myth of the West
Lecture: The role of the west in the Irish imagination
Seminar: J.M. Synge, The Playboy of the Western World; John Ford, dir., The Quiet Man
Session 6: Joyce
Lecture: Introduction to Joyce
Seminar: ‘The Dead’, from Dubliners
Session 7: The Founding of the Free State
Lecture: 1916; The War of Independence; The Civil War
Seminar: Neil Jordan, dir., Michael Collins
Session 8: The Creation of Northern Ireland
Lecture: Unionism; World War II; The founding of Northern Ireland
Seminar: Frank McGuinness, Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching towards the Somme
Session 9: Mid-Term Exam
Session 10: Being Irish in English
Lecture: The creation of an Irish identity in English
Seminar: Brian Friel, Translations
Session 11: The Northern Irish ‘Troubles’
Lecture: The history of the ‘Troubles’
Seminar: Paul Greengrass, dir., Bloody Sunday
Session 12: The Artistic Response to the ‘Troubles’
Lecture: The Northern Irish literary ‘renaissance’
Seminar: Seamus Heaney, selected poems; Anne Devlin, Ourselves Alone; Steve McQueen, dir., Hunger
Session 13: Gender in Ireland
Lecture: Women and gender in the Republic and Northern Ireland
Seminar: Eavan Boland, ‘Outside History’; Marina Carr, The Mai
Session 14: Sport in Ireland
Lecture: Varieties of sports in Ireland and their relationships with political and cultural movements; the GAA
Seminar: Football (soccer); Rugby; Horse racing
Session 15: Irish Music and Contemporary Ireland
Lecture: From Carolan to boy bands
Seminar: Traditional music; popular music; Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn, dirs., Good Vibrations (2013)
Presentations
Session 4: Use of Irish myth in W.B. Yeats, On Baile’s Strand
W.B. Yeats, Cathleen Ni Houlihan and cultural nationalism
Session 5: Fathers and sons in J.M. Synge, The Playboy of the Western World:
Gender relations and stereotypes in John Ford, dir., The Quiet Man:
Session 6: The dead in Joyce, ‘The Dead’
Session 7: Heroes and anti-heroes in Neil Jordan, dir., Michael Collins
Session 8: Masculinities in Frank McGuinness, Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching
towards the Somme
Session 10: The depiction of language change in Brian Friel, Translations
Session 11: Concepts of justice in Paul Greengrass, dir., Bloody Sunday
Session 12: Senses of roots in Seamus Heaney, selected poems (‘Digging’; ‘Mid-Term
Break’; ‘Personal Helicon’; ‘Requiem for the Croppies’; ‘Toome’; ‘Broagh’;
‘The Tollund Man’)
Steve McQueen, dir., Hunger: the body as the site of politics
The depiction of the roles of women in the ‘Troubles’ in Anne Devlin,
Ourselves Alone
Session 13: Women in Ireland in the 20th century
Women, Ireland and Literature in Eavan Boland, ‘Outside History’
(De)generations in Marina Carr, The Mai
Session 14: Football (soccer); Rugby; Horse racing. Focus on the historical
developments of these sports, their political and social statuses and
how these may have changed, where they have featured in literary
and popular culture.
Session 15: The history of traditional music
Popular music since the 1960s in Ireland
Punk and the ‘Troubles’ in Good Vibrations
Required reading:
W.B. Yeats, On Baile’s Strand
J.M. Synge, The Playboy of the Western World
Sean O’Casey, Juno and the Paycock
Frank McGuinness, Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching towards the Somme
John McGahern, Amongst Women
Other texts listed in the syllabus will be available for photocopying as a Reader.
Optional references:
The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, vols. I-V, (Derry and Cork: Field Day and Cork University Press, 1991 and 2002)
Irish University Review, vol. 33, no. 1, (2003), ‘New Perspectives on the Irish Literary Revival’
Irish University Review, 35: 1 Spring/Summer 2005, (Special John McGahern issue)
The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, 17:1, July 1991, (Special John McGahern issue)
The Irish Review, 4, Spring 1988, (Nationalism and Revisionism Symposium)
Jonathan Bardon, A History of Ulster: New Updated Edition, (Belfast: The Blackstaff Press, 2001)
George D. Boyce, Nationalism in Ireland, 3rd ed., (London and New York: Routledge, 1995)
Brendan Bradshaw, ‘Nationalism and Historical Scholarship in Modern Ireland’, Irish Historical Studies, XXVI: 104, November 1989, pp. 329-351
Ciaran Brady, (ed.), Interpreting Irish History: The Debate on Historical Revisionism, 1938-1994, (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1994)
Malcolm Brown, The Politics of Irish Literature: from Thomas Davis to W.B. Yeats, (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1972)
Terence Brown, (ed.), Celticism, (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996)
Terence Brown, Ireland: A Social and Cultural History 1922-1985, (London: Fontana, 1985)
Steve Bruce, God Save Ulster: The Religion and Politics of Paisleyism, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986)
David Cairns and Shaun Richards, Writing Ireland: Colonialism, Nationalism and Culture, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988)
Clare Carroll and Patricia King, (eds.), Ireland and Post-Colonial Theory, (Cork: Cork University Press, 2002)
Joe Cleary and Claire Connolly, (eds.) The Cambridge Companion to Modern Irish Culture, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)
Terry Eagleton, Fredric Jameson, and Edward W. Said, Nationalism, Colonialism, and Literature (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990)
Roy Foster, The Irish Story: Telling Tales and Making It Up in Ireland, (London and New York: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 2001)
Roy Foster, Modern Ireland, 1600-1972, (London: Penguin, 1988)
Roy Foster, ‘The Problems of Writing Irish History’, History Today, 34: 1, January 1984, pp. 27-30.
Roy Foster, ‘‘We Are All Revisionists Now’’, The Irish Review, 1, 1986, pp. 1-5.
Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983)
Ernest Gellner, Culture, Identity, and Politics, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987)
Nicholas Grene, The Politics of Irish Drama: Plays in Context from Boucicault to Friel, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)
Stephen Howe, Ireland and Empire: Colonial Legacies in Irish History and Culture, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)
Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation (London: Vintage, 1996)
Joseph J. Lee, Ireland 1912-1985, Politics and Society, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)
Ben Levitas, The Theatre of Nation: Irish Drama and Nationalism, 1890-1916, (Oxford University Press, 2002)
David Lloyd, Ireland After History, (Cork: Cork University Press, 1999)
F. S. L. Lyons, Culture and Anarchy in Ireland, 1890-1939, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979)
Eamonn McCann, War and an Irish Town, 3rd ed., (London and Boulder, Colorado: Pluto Press, 1993)
Conor McCarthy, Modernisation, Crisis and Culture in Ireland, 1969-1992, (Dublin and Portland, OR: Four Courts Press, 2000)
W. J. McCormack, (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Modern Irish Culture, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999)
John McGahern, Memoir, (London: Faber, 2006)
Christopher Murray, Twentieth-Century Irish Drama: A Mirror up to Nation, (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1997)
Lionel Pilkington, Theatre and the State in Twentieth-Century Ireland: Cultivating the People, (London and New York: Routledge, 2001)
Anthony Roche, Contemporary Irish Drama: From Beckett to McGuinness, (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1994)
William Irwin Thompson, The Imagination of an Insurrection: Dublin, Easter 1916, A Study of an Ideological Movement, (New York and London: Harper and Row, 1972)
