IASIL 2004 Conference in Galway



Greetings from the New Executive

Chair’s Address

With the New Year 2004 comes the first Newsletter of the new executive of IASIL, the membership of which is listed below. As I take over as Chair of IASIL I wish to pay tribute to my immediate predecessor, Professor Christopher Murray and his executive for the active and energetic state in which they left IASIL. The successful conferences in Sao Paolo and Debrecen, since the last occasion in Ireland, at Dublin City University with St. Patrick's College Drumcondra, have given a wide number of people the opportunity to engage at first hand with other scholars and with first class writers in the field of Irish literature. The new executive hopes to build upon this foundation, and to develop personal opportunities for those of you who can come to the conferences, and also access to the current scholarship through your subscription to the Irish University Review.

The advent of our independent webpage and listserv will also facilitate more immediate information and easier virtual conversation between you the members. Our secretary Dawn Duncan has compiled an email database comprising 435 of our current members. These will receive this Newsletter electronically while the other members will receive a hard copy in the post. In the section of this letter headed 'IASIL Goes High-Tech' Dawn outlines our future plans for Newsletter distribution via email. If you wish to receive it as hard-copy in future, please note that you need to contact Dawn to arrange this. There is also information about how to join the listserv, if you have not already availed of this opportunity (Listmaster Dawn Duncan). You can keep up to date with events planned by IASIL by means of the IASIL website (Webmaster Patrick Lonergan). The website is updated regularly, and provides a link for the forthcoming conference in Galway in July. The 2005 conference in Prague will also have a link in due course. My thanks to Dawn and Patrick for overseeing this improvement in communication.

I look forward to welcoming many of you to the forthcoming conference in Galway from July 20 to 23 inclusive. The timing of the conference has been designed to take advantage of a brief window of opportunity when the academic calendars of universities from Japan to South America via Australia, Europe and North America are all in recess simultaneously. This happens to coincide with the Galway Arts Festival, which will probably prove a strong temptation to IASIL scholars attending the conference. Details of the Arts Festival will be provided once they are available. The week following the conference, any racing devotees among you may experience the unique atmosphere of the Galway Races. There are also the traditional delights of the seaside at Salthill, within walking distance of the university. You will be visiting Galway in high season, which does affect the economics of the conference, but this also provides many choices and opportunities. Because many delegates avail of their visit to Ireland to pursue research and other personal interests, a post-conference weekend only is planned, from Saturday 24 to Monday 26 July. The trip will explore South Galway and Clare, and those of you who wish may transfer to Shannon Airport on Monday rather than return to Galway.

A second call for papers has been sent by post to all members of IASIL, with a closing date of 1st March 2004. Details of accommodation, registration form and costs will be sent to everybody whose paper is accepted, or who indicate that they wish to attend without proposing a paper. The AGM of IASIL will take place during the conference as usual. An outline of the Scholarship scheme to enable students from universities outside Ireland to attend the conference is included in this Newsletter, while full details will be posted on the IASIL website.

If I do not see you at Galway, I hope I will have the opportunity to meet many of you at our future conferences in Prague 2005 and in Sydney 2006. New Year greetings and best wishes to you all.

Riana O'Dwyer

Note from Secretary

A happy New Year to you all, and my thanks for allowing me to serve the IASIL membership as secretary. A special thanks goes to Tina Mahony, our outgoing secretary, for all of her help and guidance during the transition. She has patiently answered questions, provided materials and tips, and steered me in the right direction. As you may know, Tina helped originate our move to high tech as we initiated the website. She also created the first listserv for the Executive. As we have moved forward in this area of communication, we owe a debt of gratitude to Tina for all of her work. I hope that I can carry out my duties with as much grace.

I hope to continue to improve lines of communication and assist in connecting students, scholars, and aficionados with IASIL and all that we offer. Please feel free to contact me at any time with ideas, suggestions, information, or simply friendly conversation.

Dawn Duncan

Note from Treasurer

As your incoming treasurer I would like to formally thank my predecessor, Patricia Lynch, for leaving her accounts in pristine condition. I would also like to assure you of my swift attention to any problems which you may have with membership issues. I look forward to seeing you all in Galway in the Summer.

Eugene O'Brien

IASIL 2004 Conference in Galway

The 2004 conference of the International Association for the Study of Irish Literature will meet in Galway, Ireland from July 20-24. Hosted by the National University of Ireland, Galway, and organized by IASIL President Riana O’Dwyer, the upcoming conference with a theme of “Writing Ireland 2004: Past, Present, Future” promises to be especially exciting. The conference theme acknowledges the literary anniversaries which occur this year, while also exploring the present state of Irish writing, and looking to the future, including perhaps the new media which are expanding the range of literary creativity.

The conference activities will take place on the campus of the university, which is situated on the banks of the River Corrib, close to the city centre. Accommodation choices will include student apartments in Corrib Village, and a range of local hotels. The conference will coincide with the Galway Arts Festival, and will conclude shortly before Galway’s famous Race Week. There will be an opportunity to explore the countryside during the conference, and an optional post-conference weekend trip to County Clare.

IASIL Scholarships 2004.

IASIL will offer six scholarships to assist overseas student members of IASIL to attend the conference at National University of Ireland, Galway, 20-24 July 2004. Three scholarships will be worth Euro 1000, and three will be worth Euro 500. The scholarships will be presented to the successful candidates during the conference.

Terms and Conditions:

1 Applicants must be paid-up student members of IASIL for 2004. The relevant dues must be paid before 31 March 2004. Information on how to become a member is available on the IASIL website.

2 Applicants must be registered for a postgraduate university degree outside Ireland.

3 Each applicant must submit the following:

(a) Conference paper proposal.

(b) Letter of application for the scholarship (one page).

(c) Reference from research supervisor (one page).

4 The scholarship awards will be considered by a committee of IASIL, consisting of the Treasurer, the chair of the organising committee, and an independent academic assessor. The decisions of the committee will be final.

5. The candidates will be informed of the outcome of the competition before the end of April 2004. Payment of the scholarship is conditional on the delivery of the proposed paper at the conference.

Entries for the scholarship scheme should be sent to arrive no later than 15 March 2004. Please post materials to:

IASIL 2004 Conference Organisers

Department of English

National University of Ireland, Galway

Galway

Ireland.

Support Fund:

IASIL has a limited support fund available to assist members in financial difficulty to attend the conference. If you are not eligible to apply for a scholarship as outlined above, but wish to make a case for assistance from the IASIL support fund, please outline your situation in a brief letter to the Scholarship Committee, and enclose a letter of support from an academic familiar with your work. To avail of support fund assistance you must be a paid-up member of IASIL of at least three years standing, and have your paper proposal accepted.

Applications for support fund assistance will be considered by the scholarship committee, whose decisions will be final. Applicants will be informed of the outcome of their application before the end of April 2004. Payment of the assistance will be made at the conference, and is conditional on the delivery of the proposed paper at the conference.

Report on IASIL 2003 Conference

From 8-12 July, IASIL members from around the world gathered at the University of Debrecen in Hungary for a conference focusing on “Getting Into Contact” and the international connections the theme and its epigraph by Padraic Pearse implies: “Irish literature, if it is to live and grow, must get into contact on the one hand with its own past and on the other with the mind of contemporary Europe.” Of course, our international scholars went beyond Pearse’s vision into a 21st century that is truly global in its connectedness. Some 96 scholars from 22 countries delivered papers in culture and history, translation, drama, poetry, fiction and film. Csilla Bertha and Donald Morse, conference organizers, should be congratulated on hosting an outstanding conference full of particularly fine moments.

Some of the outstanding conference events included a night of poetry with John Montague and an evening of drama with Dermot Bolger. Additionally, fine lectures were given by Anthony Roche in his keynote on “Synge, Brecht, and the Hiberno-German Connection,” as well as the plenaries by Dáithi Ó hÓgáin on “Poetry in Social Life—Survival in Ireland of Old European Ideas,” Patricia Coughlin on “‘The fruit as soft as air’: Irish Literature and Feminism in Postmodernity,” and Maureen Murphy on “The Flowering of Field Day: Women’s Writing and Wild Geese.” Heinz Kosok, a founding member of IASIL and longtime Executive Committee officer, announced his retirement from the committee. IASIL members voted to honor Heinz for his decades of energetic service to IASIL by naming him an Honorary Life Member, only the third person honored as such in our history.

Beyond the engaging scholarly and creative presentations, the beauty of Debrecen, the passion of Hungarian music in its many forms, and the kindness of the Hungarian people also enchanted members. For many of us the pleasure of learning and scholarly companionship continued as we toured Hungary with our knowledgeable and congenial hosts. Of course, there were many opportunities for fine food, drink and more music, and for exploring significant sites and lovely landscapes. To say that the Hungarian experience culminated on a mountaintop fits both the facts and the sensation. Hungary and the conference will long remain fondly in our memories. Check the website for conference photos.

IASIL Election Results:

This year marked an election of a new executive for IASIL, the results of which were announced at the conference in Debrecen, Hungary. The new executive is as follows:

Chair, Riana O’Dwyer

Secretary, Dawn Duncan

Treasurer, Eugene O’Brien

Election Officer: Wolfgang Zach

Ireland:

Vice-Chair, Nicholas Grene

Representatives:

John Devitt

Margaret Kelleher

Patricia Lynch

Europe (excluding Ireland):

Vice-Chair, Werner Huber

Representatives:

Csilla Bertha

Claire Connolly

Shaun Richards

North America:

Vice-Chair: James Doan

Representatives:

Joan Dean

José Lanters (also serving as treasurer)

Christina Hunt Mahony

Japan:

Vice-Chair, Masazumi Toraiwa

Representatives:

Reiji Fujimoto

Seishi Matsuda

Mitsuko Ohno

Other Countries:

Vice-Chair, Munira H. Mutran

Representatives:

Youngmin Kim

Peter Kuch

Mary Massoud

Summary of 2003 Treasurer’s Report

As reported by Patricia Lynch, outgoing treasurer, as of June 2003, IASIL carried 571 names on its membership list. The credit card option of paying dues is proving the most popular form of payment. Our account stood at a healthy 23,600 euro, which represented an increase of over 8,000 euro from the previous year.

Summary of 2003 Secretary’s Report

In her final year as secretary, Christina Hunt Mahoney reports that she spent a great deal of her effort in updating our email addresses, information for the in-progress website, our list of publishers, and IASIL files. She also set up and maintained a listserv for the Executive Committee members of IASIL and corresponded with our membership at-large.

IASIL Goes High-Tech

As many of you are now aware, IASIL now has an extensive, easy-to-consult website, thanks to Patrick Lonergan. Thanks to the hard work of Patrick, the IASIL website is both user-friendly and great looking! Members may locate up-to-date information on virtually any IASIL topic and many related matters of interest to our scholars. Simply log-on to and follow the many links. Newsletters past, present and future, will be accessible at the site, along with news of conferences, publications, and other relevant matters.

Our new secretary, Dawn Duncan, has also established a listserv for the general membership to which only members may post. Working from the membership information provided to the former and present treasurers and secretary, along with updates that come her way, Dawn has amassed an email listserv that represents 432 of our current members. Members who have not provided current email addresses or who elect not to receive electronic mail via the listserv will still receive a hardcopy of the newsletter for now. In the future, our newsletter will be distributed electronically unless you make a special request to Dawn Duncan to receive a hard copy via regular mail. If you make such a request, please make sure you include the address to which the newsletter should be sent. However, the immediacy of electronic communication and its cost effectiveness has certainly proved an overall boon to staying in touch with regard to news relevant to the membership. If you are not currently receiving email via the listserv and would like to do so, please send your request with the correct email address to duncan@cord.edu and you will be added to the listserv. Once a member of the listserv, you may send mail relevant to the membership to iasil@cord.edu for distribution.

With regard to our on-going electronic conversation and information delivery system, make sure that the subject line of emails clearly identifies IASIL or a specific IASIL subject in order to avoid unnecessary deletions. In this age of e-viruses, many of us are probably used to deleting any messages that come from an unrecognized source. Given that we now have 435 members connected by email, some of us might not recognize all of the possible names. Indicating in the subject line a clear connection to IASIL should help.

As we work to improve and sustain our communication worldwide, we welcome new members and encourage all members to make sure that they are in good standing with current dues paid. We want you to remain in close contact, but we need you to help sustain that possibility with the financial support provided through your dues.

Obituaries

As many of you are already aware, we lost two of our valued members this year: Paul Brennan and Lorna Reynolds. We remember them with fondness and appreciation.

In Memoriam Paul Brennan- 1939-2003.

Since November 10th 2003, some Irish Studies scholars in France and abroad have been mourning a colleague, but many more have been coping with the loss of a favourite friend, of someone whose role was central in their lives. Paul Brennan was of course a most successful academic, who, after spending a few years as Professor of Irish and British Studies at the University of Caen, was called to occupy the same position at the prestigious University of the Sorbonne-Paris III. In Paris and in Caen he attracted dozens of graduates each year, all eager to enroll in his classes and have their M.A. or Ph.D dissertations in Irish Studies supervised by him. He published extensively on various aspects of Irish history, politics or economy, created a journal called  L’Irlande politique et sociale published at the Sorbonne-Paris III and was co-editor of Etudes irlandaises for years. He was recognised as a resource-person by the French media who often used his expertise in the issue of the conflict in Northern Ireland. Every year Paul was asked to write a paper on the evolution of the Republic of Ireland for « La Documentation française », a government publication meant to spread reference information in the fields of political, social, economic sciences, nationwide and at an international level. He was very active in the French academic world at large, sitting on numerous official boards and committees, such as the « Conseil National des Universités », an elected body which governs the careers of all university teachers. For years he was vice-president of the CAPES, the competitive recruiting exam for secondary-school teachers. Over the last three years, the Minister for Education had put him in charge of supervising the re-organisation of the national curriculum for all modern languages in secondary schools. Even though all these tasks cost him considerable amounts of time and energy, Paul took a special pride in fulfilling them, so great was his committment to the public service.

But most of all, he was a tireless champion of the cause of Irish Studies in France, continuing the pioneering work of Patrick Rafroidi, Jacqueline Genet or Claude Fierobe. As President of the SOFEIR (Société Française d’Etudes Irlandaises) for six years, Paul made sure to develop throughout the country a network of scholars who all worked in a spirit of solidarity and enterprise, but also to maintain connections with academics in other countries. He was at the origin of the creation of the European Federation of Associations and Centres of Irish Studies (EFACIS) and often reminded us of the importance of taking part in its activities. Paul had friends and connections everywhere and at all levels of public life, and when the SOFEIR decided to celebrate year 2000 by holding its annual conference in Dublin, he was able to gather an amazing group of top-ranking Irish academics, as well as politicians, film-makers or writers, who all agreed to join us in Newman House for two days of round tables and discussions. For all his involvements in many areas of academic and public life-he was also an active member of a trade-union and a socialist sympathiser- Paul will be remembered by his colleagues and students as a generous, warm, devoted friend who gave every one of us the feeling that he or she was in his particular care. Many of us now feel deprived of a faithful supporter who was always at our side to tell us that it was time to make a move in our careers, who was there to encourage us and even at times scold us for our lack of ambition, courage or energy. Paul himself was full of energy, and despite the enormous load of work that he chose to carry through, he never complained: he was the most joyful person I have ever known, someone who brightened up your day, and turned all Irish Studies meetings into friendly, happy occasions. We all enjoyed his quips and his irony, his Irish « crack », and were all seduced by his enormous personal charm. Today, even though we have promised ourselves to carry on Paul’s work and to keep his spirit alive, we French Irish Studies scholars find that our world has lost some of its colours and attractions, a feeling we know many of you will share.

Sylvie Mikowski

Professor of Irish Studies

Université de Reims-Champagne-Ardenne

In Memoriam Lorna Reynolds- 1911-2003.

Lorna Reynolds was Professor Emeritus of Modern English at the National University of Ireland, Galway, having previously taught for 30 years at University College Dublin. She also wrote poetry and was the author of a critical biography of Kate O'Brien. It has been said that her life celebrated freedom of women.

Her lifelong friendship with O'Brien began at a meeting of the Women Writers' Club. In her study, Kate O'Brien: A Literary Portrait, she argued that, while the subject of feminism was never openly raised in O'Brien's writing, the theme of her novels was the necessity for woman to be as free as man. It was also the theme of Lorna Reynolds's life.

Lorna was born on December 17th, 1911, in Jamaica, one of the five children of Michael Reynolds and his wife, Theresa (née Redmond). Her father died when she was 10, and the family returned to Ireland. Having spent three years in Birr, Co Offaly, the family moved to Dublin and she completed her secondary education at the Dominican College, Eccles Street. She then studied English at University College Dublin (UCD), where Cyril Cusack, Brian O'Nolan (Flann O'Brien) and Mary Lavin were among her contemporaries. She obtained a BA in 1933, an MA in 1935 and completed her PhD thesis on the Bible in 1940.

Shortly after graduating, deciding that a life dedicated to learning was as honourable as a life in law, medicine or commerce, she joined the UCD teaching staff. A feature of UCD at the time was the rigid segregation of male and female staff. There was a Lady Professors' Room, a Men Professors' Room and a separate room for clerics. In accordance with the dress code, academic gowns were worn by the teaching staff. But Lorna Reynolds's flair could not be hidden by a gown. Her style of dress was sometimes flamboyant but always elegant. Likewise, her manner was always courteous but never less than direct.

Her ability to communicate, combined with her readiness to listen, greatly benefited her students, as did her intelligent and perceptive grasp of the texts on her course. She had a very strong presence in the classroom and commanded full attention when delivering a lecture. She was particularly effective in sharing her abiding love of English literature with generations of students in UCD and, later, in University College Galway (UCG). In her hands, one student recalled, Shakespeare came alive. In 1966 she was appointed Professor of Modern English at UCG. She made an immediate impact, revitalising the department and organising conferences, among them the J.M.Synge centenary conference in 1971.

The Dublin Magazine published her early poetry and short stories in the 1940s. She was later a contributor to The Bell, Poetry Ireland, Arena, The Lace Curtain and Botteghe Oscure. Her translations of Italian poetry were highly regarded. In the 1950s she edited the University Review (now the Irish University Review). With Robert O'Driscoll, she was editor of Yeats and the Theatre (1975) and The Untold Story: The Irish in Canada (1988).

A prominent member of the Women's Social and Progressive League in the 1940s, she was later active in the Anti-Censorship Board, the inaugural meeting of which was chaired by Maud Gonne. She joined in debates on the issues of the day at the Contemporary Club. A lively after-dinner speaker, she was regularly invited to address women's groups. Through her espousal of progressive causes, and her involvement in the UCD Women Graduates' Association, she contributed to the advance of women's rights in Irish society and academic life. Her views, openly and forcefully expressed, did not always find favour with the UCD authorities - least of all with Michael Tierney, president of the college. But she could not remain silent in the face of injustice, ignoring her mother's words: "Lorna, is it not possible for you, occasionally, to turn a blind eye?".

As Irish delegate to various international writers' conferences, she met many of the leading European writers of the 20th century, including Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Halldor Laxness and Giuseppe Ungaretti. Italy was virtually a second home, and she enjoyed its culture, especially good food and wine. She delighted in entertaining friends and was an excellent cook.

Her interest in cooking began in childhood and continued throughout a busy academic career, during which she put many an inherited, modified and invented recipe to the test. She believed that "the palate must be pleased, the spirits lifted and the mind stimulated by the food we eat". Her cooking never failed to satisfy. So impressed was the Italian novelist Ignazio Silone that he said she could have made a living as a chef in Paris. A book of her recipes, Tasty Food for Hasty Folk, was published in 1990.

In 1978 she returned from Galway to live in the family home off Merrion Road in Dublin. Explaining the relationship between her personality, her literary work and her cooking, she said: "I am a thorough-going character. Whatever I do, I like to do well, and that extends to polishing the silver."

Her sister, Mabel Fitzgerald-Smith, survives her.

Irish Studies News

Recent Publications with notes/reviews:

Techne: James Joyce, Hypertext & Technology

By Louis Armand

Prague: Karolinum/Charles University Press, 2003.

226pp.

ISBN: 80-246-0391-8.

While this study is concerned with the question of technology in its its relation to the work of James Joyce and theories of hypertext, it is also, and more specifically, addressed to a concept of technology arising from the language of Finnegans Wake. Drawing upon developments in communication theory and information technology, this study attempts to map a parallel development in Joyce's uses of language in the Wake, arguing that Joyce's writing provides a model for re-thinking the relationship between technology and "all forms of cultural production." The purpose of this is not, however, to suggest that Joyce was necessarily in some way cognisant of a future possibility of hypertext, nor is it simply concerned with a retrospective glance at Joyce from the position of current computing technologies. Rather, it is to examine how Joyce's work is aware of its own position against and within contemporary developments in the sciences and electronic media, and that Joyce incorporated material from these developments into his texts.

"Techne is the first major attempt to think the relationship of poetics to technology & hypertextuality in the work of James Joyce. At once a history and critical theory of ‘Joycean hypertext,’ this volume represents one of the most significant recent contributions to the discussion of Joyce’s ‘techno-poetics’ and to the philosophy of discursive materiality."

Un’irlandese a Torino: Lady Morgan

Donatella Abbate Badin

Trauben 2003.

12 €

This volume contains a 78 page introduction (in Italian) on Lady Morgan as a travel-writer and the translation into Italian of chapters 2, 3, and 4 of her Italy (1821), which concern her travels through Piedmont and her stay in Turin, then the capital of the Kingdom of Sardinia and future capital of Italy.

Surprisingly Lady Morgan’s Italy had never been translated into Italian although among the many travel accounts written in the 18th and 19th centuries, it is one of the most sympathetic to the country and its people. The book is full of perceptive insights into the political situation of Italy after the Napoleonic wars, the role of England in Restoration Europe, and the plight of a woman traveller with a Jacobin disposition. It suggests interesting parallelisms with Ireland and is rich in amusing anecdotes about the social and literary life of the age. Un’irlandese a Torino is the first volume of a project of the University of Turin in which the next step is to publish an abridged Italian edition of Italy and, eventually, an abridged English edition; both, of course, with a full academic introduction.

Irish Political Economy, 4 volumes

Edited by Tom Boylan & Tadhg Foley

Routledge, 2003

Volume I: pp. xxi+358; volume II: pp. vi+313; volume III: pp. vi+354; volume IV: pp. viii+443.

This anthology, edited by Professor Tom Boylan, Department of Economics and Professor Tadhg Foley, Department of English (both of NUI, Galway), is the first of its kind to reproduce some of the most significant writings on political economy in nineteenth-century Ireland. Though the Irish were seen, and often saw themselves, as allergic to ideas, these volumes provide abundant evidence of both extensive and intensive Irish contributions to economic thought. Indeed as Dr Tom Duddy of the Department of Philosophy, NUI, Galway has eloquently and convincingly shown in his recently-published History of Irish Thought, the Irish have made outstanding, if largely unnoticed, contributions to philosophical thinking. Volume I of Irish Political Economy deals with the scope and methodology of the subject, volume II with the theory of value and distribution, while volume III covers public finance, money and banking, and international trade. The final volume reprints material on such topics as laissez-faire, population, emigration and colonization, poor law, absenteeism, slavery, gender, and education. Among the authors reproduced in this anthology are Isaac Butt, Archbishop Richard Whately, John Elliot Cairnes, John Kells Ingram, Cliffe Leslie, W.E. Hearn, Charles F. Bastable, Francis Y. Edgeworth, Mountifort Longfield, and Robert Torrens.

The Cambridge Companion to Contemporary Irish Poetry

Edited by Matthew Campbell

ISBN: 0521012457

In the last fifty years Irish poets have produced some of the most exciting poetry in contemporary literature, writing about love and sexuality, violence and history, country and city. This book provides a unique introduction to major figures such as Seamus Heaney, but also introduces the reader to significant precursors like Louis MacNeice or Patrick Kavanagh, and vital contemporaries and successors: among others, Thomas Kinsella, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill and Paul Muldoon. Readers will find discussions of Irish poetry from the traditional to the modernist, written in Irish as well as English, from both North and South. This Companion provides cultural and historical background to contemporary Irish poetry in the contexts of modern Ireland but also in the broad currents of modern world literature. It includes a chronology and guide to further reading and will prove invaluable to students and teachers alike.

Contributors: Matthew Campbell, John Goodby, Jonathan Allison, Peter McDonald, Alex Davis, Fran Brearton, Dillon Johnston, Terence Brown, Frank Sewell, Guinn Batten, Shane Murphy, Lucy Collins, Robert Faggen, David Wheatley.

A Family of His Own: A Life of Edwin O’Connor

By Charles F. Duffy

Catholic University of America Press

376 pages, b&w photos

Hardcover only, $49.95

ISBN 0-8132-1337-1

When The Last Hurrah was published in 1956, the obscure Edwin O’Connor (1918-1968) gained sudden wealth and fame with his elegiac novel about a veteran political campaigner. Six years later O’Connor’s intimate portrait of a recovered alcoholic priest in The Edge of Sadness won a Pulitzer Prize. The different worlds of these two novels highlight a striking contrast in their author. O’Connor was a witty, affable man with many devoted friends, from a president to street eccentrics. Yet, he was an intensely private man. For this biography, the first to be written of Edwin O’Connor, Charles F. Duffy interviewed O’Connor’s family, friends, and associates. He also investigated O’Connor’s worlds in Rhode Island, Notre Dame, Boston, Dublin, and Wellfleet. In addition, he makes the most extensive use to date of the Edwin O’Connor Papers, a valuable collection containing many unpublished works.

“An exemplary work. Mr. Duffy has created an unusually rich, faithful, and readable account of the life, writings, and times of a devoted writer of fiction whose inner life was unusually private but whose genial personality made him widely loved. I saw Edwin O’Connor almost every working day for the last dozen years of his life; and Mr. Duffy has left out nothing that matters.”—Peter Davison, The Atlantic Monthly

“Edwin O’Connor’s The Last Hurrah is the most acute, hilarious, and vivid American political novel of the twentieth century; and Charles F. Duffy’s thoughtful biography renews the memory of Edwin O’Connor, that witty and elegant man, and illuminates the dilemmas of Irish American writers coming to terms with American society.” –Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

Postcolonial Theory in Irish Drama From 1800-2000

By Dawn Duncan

The Edwin Mellen Press

272 pp.

Hardcover only $109.95 (available at 30% discount through March 2004)

ISBN: 0-7734-6498-0

This study demonstrates the practical application of postcolonial theory to Irish drama. It argues that postcolonial tactics must evolve to suit temporal needs, calling for re-evaluation of writers too easily dismissed or overlooked in earlier generations. Starting with Sheridan’s sister, Alicia LeFanu, around the Act of Union, moving to Dion Boucicault’s comedic melodramas post-famine, then to W.B. Yeats’ romantic Celt mythology plays, on to Brian Friel’s interrogation of nationalisms, and finally to contemporary voices now emerging, analyses of the focus plays and their public reception illustrates why drama, as a communally received literate work, may more powerfully voice postcolonial concerns than the previously privileged novel form.

“Duncan sets out to establish several interrelated points about language and its constitutive powers, about the particular intensity in colonial situations of the struggle over language and, in Ireland’s case, the specific forms of that contest dictated by the weakening and near-loss of the Irish language and the dominance of English….the project is executed with verve and insight. The readings of LeFanu and of Boucicault are perhaps the more memorable, in part because of they are comparatively speaking, unknown. But the coherence of the argument is so well-sustained that the work of all four dramatists illuminate one another….It is in the revelation of the role of language, both in the creation of the stereotype and in the resistance to it, that Duncan’s book achieves its most telling effects. I would recommend it highly. This book touches on so many of the issues that have been theorized in postcolonial studies and yet have not been sufficiently realized in studies of postcolonial texts, that it is doubly welcome as a tonic piece of analysis and as an enrichment of, indeed an inflection of, some the central tenets of current commentary in this field.”—Seamus Deane, Professor of English and Irish Studies, Notre Dame

“Contrary to conventional viewpoints that Irish drama did not exist before Yeats, Lady Gregory and Synge, [this study] effectively demonstrates the existence of an Irish dramatic tradition ranging across two centuries….Her conclusion projects this trajectory into a future where Irish identity will be shaped, in part at least, by writers of the Irish diaspora and by Irish women writers. Employing sociolinguistic and postcolonial perspectives, Professor Duncan writes in clear energetic prose.”—F.C. McGrath,

Professor of English, University of Southern Maine

“Professor Duncan has written a fascinating study….While using the theories of the postcolonialists, who examine the power of language to create political and cultural dominance, she carves out an important place for herself by challenging those who would exclude Irish writers from the postcolonial grouping and its debate. By using Irish plays and looking at the reviews of how these were received by live audiences, Duncan is able to accurately gauge whether or not these portrayed Irish identity….This work has been beautifully written and formatted. It includes an excellent commendatory preface [by Michael Kenneally, former IASIL chair] and a sufficient bibliography and index. This work is a genuine contribution to scholarship! …Because of its contribution to scholarship, I recommend that this book be considered for an Adele Mellen Prize.”—Ruth Ragovin, Professor and Final Reader for the Mellen Press

Violence and Modernism: Ibsen, Joyce, and Woolf

By William A. Johnsen

192 pp.    

Cloth: $55.00   

ISBN: 0-8130-2665-2

Employing Northrop Frye and René Girard as his theoretical foundation, Johnsen reinterprets the works of three canonical modernists--Ibsen, Joyce, and Woolf--to argue for their commitment to analyzing collective violence as a defining motive in literary modernism. Johnsen shows how Frye’s vision of a movement from mythic to ironic heroes parallels Girard’s view of a society increasingly demythologized, and increasingly concerned with scapegoats and victims. He points to important similarities between these theoretical visions and a growing concern for weaker subjects across literary history, especially with the move into the modern period. Ibsen, Joyce, and Woolf, he argues, each wrestled with the powerful rituals of self-sacrifice that society requires in the modern world—with their strategies and consequences.

Using this focus, Johnsen addresses Ibsen’s controversial criticism of the democratic majority, Joyce’s inflammatory rejection of physical-force nationalism, and Woolf’s curious refusal of feminist anger as kindred responses to modern affirmations of collective violence, not merely paralleling the insights of Frye and Girard but extending and refining them.

“A unique and important book. Our understanding of literary modernism, which we think we know so well, is transformed by these analyses of the anthropological insights that it holds for readers.”—Andrew J. McKenna, Loyola University

Critical Anthology for the Study of Modern Irish Literature

Edited by Mária Kurdi

Budapest: Tankönyvkiadó (Textbook Publishers), 2003.

353 pp.

The anthology contains extracts from a selection of nearly fifty articles and books that were published by scholars from Ireland and other English-speaking countries within the last 16 years. The volume is divided into three parts: the first one focuses on aspects of the Irish cultural background, the second one offers material on Irish literature in the colonial period and during the Literary Revival, and the third one, in fact the largest, includes extracts from critical texts that deal with literature written after independence to the present.

The idea of and need for compiling a Critical Anthology for the Study of Modern Irish Literature and publish it as textbook arose from teaching experience: since the 1980s there has been an increasing interest in the teaching and studying of Irish literature at the English departments of Hungarian universities and teachers’ training colleges. The present anthology is the first one of its kind published in Hungary to make such a selection available to Hungarian students and teachers of Irish literature and help their work this way.

Contexts for Frank McGuinness's Drama

By Helen Heusner Lojek

Catholic University Press

306 pp

$69.95

Cloth ISBN 0-8132-1356-8

"Beautifully written, meticulously researched and informed by a

sensitive analysis of how the plays work in performance."—Anthony Roche, University College Dublin

“A brilliantly written book that offers great theatrical, cultural and political analysis of the plays of one of Ireland’s foremost playwrights.”—Eamonn Jordan

Thomas Davis and Ireland

Biographical Studies

By Helen F. Mulvey

Catholic University of America Press

278 pp.

$54.95

Cloth 0-8132-1303-7

This intriguing narrative examines the principal events of Thomas Davis’s life and work, discusses his role in the evolution of Irish nationalism, and reveals his importance to generations of nationalists.

Irish Fiction and Postmodern Doubt – An Analysis of the Epistemological Crisis in Modern Irish Fiction

By Neil Murphy

The Edwin Mellen Press

286 pp.

USA List Price: $109.95 UK List Price: £ 69.95  

ISBN:  0-7734-6518-9   

This study situates three contemporary Irish novelists, Aidan Higgins, John Banville and Neil Jordan in the context of Modernist and Postmodernist literature. In order to map how these writers respond to the problems of epistemological doubt, their work is positioned beside that of other writers like Rushdie, Nabokov, Calvino, Garcia-Marquez and Robbe-Grillet. In addition, the opening chapter outlines a working position on the meaning and significance of Postmodernism, as it pertains to literary fiction, with particular reference to the work of Brian McHale, Ihab Hassan, Patricia Waugh, David Harvey, Richard Kearney and David Lodge. Although firmly rooted in Irish literary studies, this work represents a departure from recent critical work in Irish literature in that it seeks, responding to the specificity of the fictionalized concerns of these writers, to contextualize the fictions of Higgins, Banville and Jordan within Irish and international literary traditions, rather than in an Irish historical or political framework.

“His analyses are witty, mordant, philosophically astute and they illustrate the extent to which every post-modern novel is in itself a sort of essay in criticism. By placing these works not just against a global backdrop of magic realist and postcolonial writing, Dr. Murphy also shows just why it makes sense to think of these writers as artists who have found in Ireland a test-case for the postmodern world.” – Prof. Declan Kiberd, Chair, Dept of Anglo-Irish Literature, National University of Ireland, Dublin

“Dr. Neil Murphy has written a very sound, penetrating and extremely informed study that represents a most valuable contribution to Irish ‘critical’ fiction as well as to the criticism on Banville, Higgins, and Jordan….As a result of his profound knowledge of the relevant studies by other critics, Dr. Murphy lays down the parameters for his investigation, explaining the phenomena of Modernism and Postmodernism and identifying Joyce’s and Beckett’s positions in the ‘critical’ tradition. (His comments on Beckett are among the best that I have encountered about that author.) ….The works of the three writers are analysed with profound insight and necessary circumspection and his Conclusion finely differentiates the individual efforts of Banville, Higgins, and Jordan. The study is an excellent piece of literary criticism.” – Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Imhof, University of Wuppertal, Germany

Six Essays On Edward Martyn (1859-1923), Irish Cultural Nationalist

By Jerry Nolan

Edwin Mellen Press

ISBN: 0-7734-6492-1

“The great virtue of Jerry Nolan's work on Edward Martyn is that it rescues

Martyn from his usual role as a bit player in the Irish Literary Renaissance and allows him to appear as the dedicated multi-facted character he was, one who cultural work for Ireland has hitherto not received the credit it is due. Nolan's book is a fine piece of scholarship, informed by great enthusiasm for its subject.”—Terence Brown, Professor of Anglo-Irish Literature, Trinity College, Dublin.

TheTulira Trilogy of Edward Martyn (1859-1923), Irish Symbolist Dramatist,

Edited and Introduced by Jerry Nolan

Edwin Mellen Press

ISBN: 0-7734-6709-2

“Jerry Nolan is to be congratulated, along with the Edwin Mellen Press, for

making these plays available...For those committed to a wider understanding of

Irish Theatre, and to staging the plays, The Tulira Trilogy is indispensable.”—Mary C. King, Visting Professor of Cultural Studies, National College of Ireland.

In Memory of Her

Poems by Rosemarie Rowley

Rowan Tree Press

“Her range of vocabulary and phrasing is impressive ..a true poet….her finest poems wear their learning lightly – she excels as a critic” - Declan Kiberd

“Lyrics of a rare strength and delicacy”—John McGahern

Everything Irish: The History, Literature, Art, Music, People, and Places of Ireland from A-Z

Edited by Lelia Ruckenstein and James A. O'Malley

General Editorial Advisor: Lawrence J. McCaffrey

Editorial Consultant for Literature: José Lanters

Ballantine Books, 2003.

Hardcover, $29.95.

ISBN 0-345-46110-X. 464 pages.

Everything Irish: The History, Literature, Art, Music, People, and Places of Ireland from A-Z is a complete volume representing the breadth and depth of Ireland and its people in an easily browsed, friendly format. Every aspect of Irish culture, geography, and history is collected and annotated in more than 900 entries, written by some of the world's leading authorities on Ireland.

Representing the Troubles in Irish Short Fiction

By Michael L. Storey

Catholic University of America Press

264 pp

$64.95

Cloth 0-8132-1366-5

A comprehensive examination of Irish short stories written over the last eighty years that have treated the Troubles. Read chronologically, the stories provide insightful perspectives on the Troubles, from the 1916 Easter Rising to the recent sectarian violence in Northern Ireland. The book demonstrates how Irish writers have embraced a variety of literary modes and techniques in order to track the varied and changing attitudes of the Irish toward every aspect of the Troubles, including revolution, violence, sectarianism, terrorism, and identity-thinking.

History, Myth, and Ritual in the Fiction of John McGahern:

Strategies of Transcendence.

James Whyte.

The Edward Mellen Press, 2002.

ISBN 0-7734-7018-2.

“This study is important for its meticulous overview of McGahern’s writing career, now spanning four decades, and for its perceptive analysis of the central integrity of McGahern’s vision. By postulating an ideal world, against which both lived experience and narrative expression can be measured, Whyte rebuts the charge of pessimism occasionally levelled at

the novelist. While not overtly confrontational, McGahern’s fiction does not permit easy acquiescence, as it exposes both the dark places and the high ground of Ireland since the 1950s. This timely book places the novels and short stories in the context of an earlier Ireland, while its focus is firmly on the artistic strategies and aesthetic vision of the major Irish novelist of the later twentieth century.”

Other Noteworthy Publications by IASIL Members:

Louis Armand, two volumes of poetry:

Strange Attractors

Cambridge: Salt, 2003

and

Malice in Underland.

Melbourne: Textbase, 2003

HJS (Hypermedia Joyce Studies)

volume 4, issue 2 (december 2003-january 2004)

Includes the following:

Transformations of the Book in Joyce's Dream Vision of Digiculture by Donald F. Theall

Problems of Annotation in a Digital Ulysses by Michael Groden

From Hypertext to Vortext / Notes on Materiality & Language by Louis Armand

The Protean Text of Ulysses and Why All Editions Are Equally >Definitive< by George Micajah Phillips

Time, Space, and Consciousness in James Joyce's Ulysses by Alexandra Anyfanti

Calligraphic Joyce II by Robert Amos

Selected Poems of James Clarence Mangan

Edited by Jacques Chuto, Rudolf Patrick  Holzapfel, Peter van de Kamp, and Ellen Shannon-Mangan

Irish Academic Press

Ireland's Others: Ethnicity and Gender in Contemporary Irish Literature and Culture.

Field Day Critical Conditions series

By Elizabeth Butler Cullingford

Co-published by Cork (2001) and Notre Dame (2002

'On the Side of Light': Critical Essays on the Poetry of Cathal O Searcaigh

Edited by James Doan and Frank Sewell

Arlen House

William Trevor: Re-Imagining Ireland

By Mary Fitzgerald

Liffey Press

Irish Studies: The Essential Glossary

Edited by John Goodby

Contributors include: Eve Patten, Alex Davis and Andrew Hadfield

Eavan Boland and the History of the Ordinary

By Patricia L. Hagen and Thomas W. Zelman

Maunsel

Irelands in the Asia-Pacific: Being Papers Delivered at the Second IASIL Asia-Pacific Symposium, UNSW

Edited by Peter Kuch and Julie-Ann Robson

Colin Smythe, 2003

489 pages

ISBN 0-86140-414-9.  

"Ireland's Modernities" issue of the postcolonial studies journal,

Interventions,

Ed. David Lloyd

Includes essay on the Blasket autobiographies by Mark Quigley

Eugene O’Brien, a very busy editor as well as IASIL treasurer, has edited the following books (as well as the Trevor book by Mary Fitzgeral cited above):

Seamus Heaney’s Searches for Answers

Pluto Press: London.

Seamus Heaney and the Place of Writing

Gainesville: University Press of Florida.

(Deemed an “outstanding academic

title” by CHOICE, the journal of the American Library Association for 2003.)

Roddy Doyle: Raining on the Parade

Contemporary Irish Writers Series

Dermot McCarthy, Huron University College, Canada. Liffey Press, Dublin.

Conor McPherson: Creating Mischief.

Contemporary Irish Writers Series

Jerry Wood, Carson-Newman College, Jefferson City, Tennessee, USA. Liffey Press, Dublin.

John McGahern: From the Local to the Universal

Contemporary Irish Writers Series. Eamon Maher, Tallaght Institute of

Technology. Liffey Press, Dublin

Fools of Fiction:  Reading William Trevor's Short Stories

By Hugh Ormsby-Lennon.  

Irish Research Series, No.16.  Maunsel & Co

Charlotte and Lionel: A Rothschild Love Story

By Stanley Weintraub

Simon and Schuster

Published 2003; paperback due in 2004

Notes Lionel de Rothschild's major role in raising funds to assist famine relief in Ireland in the mid-1840s.

General Washington’s Christmas Farewell: A Mount Vernon Homecoming

By Stanley Weintraub

Simon and Schuster

Published 2003; paperback due in 2004

Forthcoming:

Wild Colonial Girl: Critical Essays on Edna O'Brien

Edited by Lisa Colletta and Maureen O’Connor

University of Wisconsin

New Irish Studies Major:

Dr. Peter Kuch has announced the launch of a new Irish Studies major as part of the BA beginning Fall 2004 at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. You may check out the website for the new major

Possible conference?

Donatella Abbate Badin would like to organize a conference on Lady Morgan in 2005. Any interest? IASIL members, do get in touch with Donatella on the subject: donatella.badin@unito.it

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