Anglo Irish Literature

The works of many Anglo-Irish writers are familiar to us. English literature has often been dominated by Irish writers who wrote in English. In this highly entertaining and informative book, Professor Jeffares surveys the whole range of one of the richest literary traditions from its beginnings in the Middle Ages to the modern period. The earlier writing is discussed chronologically, but the great wealth of writing in the last century is discussed in genres: poetry, fiction and drama. The writers are set in their social and political context. Not only are the works of major writers from Swift to Beckett surveyed, but the work of minor and neglected writers such as Charled Maturin, Lady Morgan and Emily Lawless, is bought to the fore. This is a book to help students to a great understanding of the subject. To this end a chronological table, bibliographies and photographs have been included. It is also a book for all those who have enjoyed reading the poems of Yeats, the plays of Shaw or the novels of Joyce.

Charles Wright identifies the characteristic features of Irish Christian literature which influenced Anglo-Saxon vernacular authors. As a full-length study of Irish influence on Old English religious literature, the book will appeal to scholars in Old English literature, Anglo-Saxon studies, and Old and Middle Irish literature.

This 1929 volume draws attention to the relatively neglected area of early Anglo-Irish literature. Covering the period between the Anglo-Norman settlement of Ireland and the printing of Richard Stanihurst's translation of Virgil, the text illustrates the richness of this literature through abundant quotation from a variety of religious and secular sources.

Irish travellers or 'tinkers' have appeared as characters in Irish literature since the early nineteenth century. Representations of this semi-nomadic cultural and ethnic minority in works by non-traveller authors almost invariably function in some way within the context of Irish identity politics, whereby the 'tinker' often serves as a 'primitive' Other to a modern, civilized Irish Self. This study considers the 'tinker' character in a large body of serious and popular literary texts, some well known, others rarely if ever discussed, and traces how the literary construct of the 'tinker' figure as domestic or foreign Other evolves over time. Three chapters concentrate on specific historical contexts, as the 'tinker' shifts from being a relatively straightforward scapegoat in the literature of the early nineteenth century, to being a more complex and ambiguous embodiment of both the aspirations and anxieties of the Anglo-Irish writers of the Revival, to being a barometer of aspects of modernity and regression in the mid-twentieth-century Irish Republic. Three further chapters focus on thematic contexts that have particular relevance for the development of the 'tinker' figure: children's literature from and about Ireland; fabulist narratives, particularly those with plot configurations derived from Celtic mythology; and crime and detective fiction set in Ireland. Finally the way in which individual travellers represent themselves in autobiographical narratives of the late twentieth century is considered, often in response to the fictional 'tinker' stereotype that has persisted in sedentary society and its cultural expressions for centuries.