Learning Outcomes:
Students will develop an understanding of the complexity and diversity of this important cultural phase.
Students will understand ways in which key literary texts of the period were inflected by political debates, and in turn, how literary debate intervened in political discussion.
Students will be able to identify various strands of Irish critical debate that were fashioned during this crucial period.
Students will be able to evaluate the importance of the Irish Revival to contemporary Irish literature and culture.
Indicative Module Content:
Course Schedule
Themes and Methods
https://www.rte.ie/centuryireland/index.php/articles/literature-and-1916
A Country in Paralysis
Read: Lawless, ‘Famine Roads’, Hyde, ‘Necessity’, Joyce, ‘The Sisters’.
A Thought Revival
Read: Colum, ‘Life and the Dream’, Movements and Manifestos, Joyce, ‘Eveline’.
A Sovereign People
Read: Maud Gonne, ‘The Famine Queen’, Yeats, ‘Noble and Ignoble Loyalties’, Rooney, ‘Development of the National Ideal’, Joyce, ‘Ivy Day’.
Language Revival
Read: O’Growney, Atkinson, Synge, Pearse, Joyce, ‘A Mother’.
Theatre Matters
Read: Gregory, Milligan, Yeats, O’Neill, Joyce, ‘A Little Cloud’
Social Conditions
Read: Connolly, Larkin, Colum, Joyce, ‘Ivy Day’
[Essay Plans and annotated bibliography to be submitted in class]
Militarism/Modernism: Reading 1916
Read: Pearse, Louise Gavan Duffy, Yeats, Gonne
After the Revolution
Read: Nevinson, Burke-Plunkett, ‘The Civic Guard’, Shaw
Essay Preparation