English 306-001
Survey of Irish Literature
Instr: Walczyk, Nancy
Office: CRT 502; 229-3302
e-mail: nwalczyk@uwm.edu
Office hours:
Course Information: T&R; 11:00am-12:15pm; BOL 294
Course Description
This course presents an overview of two millenia of the literature of the two Irelands-Gaelic (in English translations) and Anglo-English-and the literature of the Irish Literary Renaissance that combined the two traditions. We also take a look at post-Renaissance authors of the 20th century. We will begin looking at a few tales from the four ancient Irish story cycles: Mythological, Ulster, Fionn, and Kings. Then, we'll see how various cultures-Christian, Norman, and English impacted on Irish Gaelic society and its literature, and discuss poetry in the Gaelic tradition. Then we'll shift to the Anglo-Irish and discuss Swift, Edgeworth, and Sommerville and Ross in the 19th century, and also the rise of Irish cultural nationalism in the works of Davis, Mangan, Lady Gregory, Yeats, Synge and others. We'll look at the drama of O'Casey, Synge, and Friel, and at the poetry of Yeats, Kavanagh, Heaney, Boland, and Ni Dhomhnaill.
