Instr:                        James Liddy
Office:                     CRT 517,     229-5441 or 962-6165 (no early calls)
e-mail:                     none
Office hours:            T,R 3:00--5:30 or by appointment,

Course Information:                                 Tues, Thurs,  12:30-1:45pm     Curtin Hall 466
 

Course Description

Order of Texts:
Brian Friel, Making History
John Montague, The Rough Field
Mary Beckett, Belfast Woman
Seamus Heaney, Open Ground, Selected Poems
Bernard MacLaverty, Cal
Frank McGuinness, Observe The Sons of Ulster Marching Towards The Somme
Seamus Heaney, Station Island
Medb McGuckian, Shelmalier
Brian Friel, Wonderful Tennessee

Other Ulster writers that could be usefully studied for papers include Derek Mahon, Paul Muldoon, James Simmons, Padriac Fiacc, Louis MacNeice, Jennifer Johnson, Maurice Leich, Patrick McCabe, and others including a number of playwrights. The students will report on a work of criticism from Terence Brown, Daniel Corkery, Seamus Deane, Declan Kibred, Edna Longley, Foster Wilson, and others whose thought is related to Northern Ireland literature (a bibliography will be available).

This course examines the fiction and poetry of Northern Ireland (also sometimes known as Ulster). There will be an overview of a divided culture's preoccupation with violence revolution, nationalisms, colonialism/post-Colonialism, exile, tension between sexuality and religious constraints, and Ireland complex historical past (all in a literary context). The course will be overshadowed by an active political struggle that has taken place on the ground since 1969. The texts will be looked at as both aesthetic achievements of a high order and documentation that reveals how different traditions endured and conflicted in "Irish reality" or "Irish discord."

Students will be allowed four unexcused absence; barring emergencies no incompletes will be given. Each student will deliver a report on a critical or theoretical text. Two papers will be assigned, one due on February 22 and the other on April 26.

Papers will be eight papers each, longer for graduate students. Attention must be paid to the local/Irish dimension of the texts. The final exam will be on the day indicated in the Schedule of classes.

Assuming attendance is in order, grades will be papers: 50%, Exam 30%, report and discussion 20%.