Reading list for ENGL30941 Contemporary Irish Poetry and Fiction

 

ENGL30941 Contemporary Irish Poetry and Fiction

 

Course Unit Director: Dr Liam Harte

 

Preparatory Reading

 

The following are the set course texts:

 

1.      Fiction

 

Barry, Sebastian. A Long Long Way (Faber, 2006).

Enright, Anne. The Gathering (Vintage, 2008).

Keegan, Claire. Walk the Blue Fields (Faber, 2007).

McCabe, Patrick. The Butcher Boy (Picador, 2007).

McGahern, John. Amongst Women (Faber, 2008).

Trevor, William, Felicia’s Journey (Penguin, 2010).

Wilson, Robert McLiam. Ripley Bogle (Minerva, 1997).

 

I strongly recommend that you purchase these six novels and one short story collection and read them over the summer.

 

2.     Poetry

 

Selected poems by Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley and Rita Ann Higgins will be made available via Blackboard when the course begins.

 

3.     Secondary Reading

 

While there is no single critical text that covers all of the course themes, I can recommend Terence Brown’s Ireland: A Social and Cultural History, 1922-2002 (Harper Perennial, 2004), especially Part IV (pp. 315429), which provides a solid and concise analysis of the literary, social and cultural history of contemporary Ireland. For those of you who wish to delve deeper, I would suggest that you read the eighth and final chapter of Diarmuid Ferriter’s The Transformation of Ireland, 1900-2000 (Profile Books, 2005), which ideals with developments during the 1970-2000 period.

 

A detailed course guide will be made available via Blackboard when the course begins in September, as will PDF copies of prescribed articles and essays on individual works and authors. But for now, just concentrate on getting those six novels read!

 

Look forward to seeing you all in September.

 

Cheers,

Liam.