Instr:                José Lanters
Office:              CRT 487,     229-4540
e-mail:              lanters@uwm.edu
Office hours:     by appointment.

Course Information:          TR 12:30-1:45    CRT 477

Course Description

By the early 1940s, both W.B. Yeats and James Joyce were dead--in body as well as in spirit. There were no Irish writers of the same calibre to take their place. Ireland's neutrality during World War II isolated it from the rest of the world and created a claustrophobic and closed-minded atmosphere.  For two decades thereafter, novels and plays did not fare well in Ireland.
The newly independent nation had not yet taken a definite shape, its leaders were defensive, and censorship was prevalent. Yeats's Abbey Theatre languished under the conservative and unimaginative management of Ernest Blythe. The 1960s, however, initiated a period of rapid social and economic change. That transition is also reflected in Irish writing of the period.

This course will focus mainly on Irish fiction and drama written since 1960, and will pay special attention to the ways in which changes in Irish society are reflected by the writers of the period. Authors discussed will include Flann O'Brien, John B. Keane, John McGahern, Brian Friel, Tom Murphy, Edna O'Brien, Marina Carr, and others.