SCHOOL OF ENGLISH
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE CORK
National University of Ireland, Cork
MA in ENGLISH
2014-15
Irish Writing and Film: Theories and Traditions
MA in Irish Writing and Film: Theories and Traditions
Welcome to the Irish Writing and Film MA!
This programme introduces you to an exceptionally rich body of cultural texts whose
breadth and diversity continues to generate scholarly debate. You will be given an
authoritative introduction to key texts from the eighteenth century to the present; will be
encouraged to engage with some of the most influential critical and theoretical models
currently being applied to Irish literature and film; and will develop independent research
in the field under the expert guidance of UCC academics. Writers who are studied include
Jonathan Swift, Maria Edgeworth, Gerald Griffin, James Joyce, W.B. Yeats, Elizabeth
Bowen, Molly Keane, John McGahern, Éilis Ní Dhuibhne, and Colm Tóibín. Classic
films set in Ireland, such as Man of Aran and The Quiet Man, are studied alongside the work
of such notable new Irish filmmakers as Lenny Abrahamson.
The programme also lays the foundation for study at higher degree level. It introduces the
required subject-specific skills (e.g., use of databases, bibliographies, archives) as well as
developing generic skills (writing, referencing, presentation skills) that will be useful as you
embark on a scholarly project or career.
If you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact the course coordinators:
Dr Heather Laird
h.laird@ucc.ie; ext 2583
O’Rahilly Building (ORB) 1.66
Dr Maureen O’Connor
maureen.oconnor@ucc.ie; ext 2586
O’Rahilly Building (ORB) 1.75
COURSE STRUCTURE
The MA is comprised of five taught modules (Part 1) and a dissertation (Part 2), which together
form 90 credits. The credits are broken down as follows:
EN6009 Contemporary Literary Research: Skills, Methods and Strategies 10 credits
EN6047 Irish Culture: Colonial, Postcolonial, Transnational 10 credits
EN6048 Gender and Sexuality 10 credits
EN6049 Gothic to Modernism 10 credits
EN6050 Space and Place 10 credits
EN6017 Dissertation 40 credits
EN6009 Contemporary Literary Research: Skills, Methods and Strategies
Period of Study: September to March
Hours of Study: 1 X 2 hour seminars per week plus related self-directed study
This collaborative module aims to equip MA students for the development and implementation
of a research strategy through the acquisition of a range of research skills. It is designed to
prepare students to present academic research in a variety of forms to a professional standard. By
means of team-teaching and self-paced interactive work, the module will familiarise students
with appropriate bibliographic styles, and with research techniques, methodologies and
approaches to information resources. It will enable students to develop further their existing skills
in formulating and communicating research ideas in the contemporary networked scholarly
environment.
Further details will be announced in introductory sessions. Please be sure you purchase
in advance The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 7th edn. New York: Modern
Language Association of America, 2009, available at John Smith’s Booksellers, and bring it to
the first class.
Total Marks for this module: 200. Online Research Journal (3,000 words, developed
from student blog), 60 marks; Literature and IT Review (1,000 words), 20 marks; in-class
assignments, 50 marks; Research Presentation (1,500 words), 60 marks; Preparation,
Attendance, and Participation, 10 marks.
EN6047; EN6048; EN6049; EN6050
Period of Study: September to March
Hours of Study: 2 x 2 hour seminars per week plus related work
These subject modules are each examined as follows: Continuous Assessment 200 marks (1 x 3000
word essay/assignment, 180 marks; Preparation, Attendance, and Participation, 20 marks). Total
Marks 200.
More details below.
EN6017 Dissertation
Period of Research and Supervision: March to September
Following the taught course, students write a thesis of 15,000-17,000 words, on a topic agreed by
the student, his/her supervisor(s), and the MA co-ordinators.
Length of dissertation: 15,000-17,000 words
Submission deadline: 25 Sept 2015 to School of English Office
Irish Writing and Film
Module Outline
1. EN6047 Irish Culture: Colonial, Postcolonial, Transnational
Edward Said has argued that “one of the main strengths of postcolonial analysis is that it widens, instead of
narrows, the interpretive perspective”. This section introduces students to the “colonial” as a critical
category for reading the interaction of cultural politics and literary production in Ireland. Students will study
the work of such seminal anti-colonial scholars and activists as Frantz Fanon, in particular writings that
explore the relationship between culture and colonialism, as well as examples of Irish postcolonial criticism.
With regard to primary texts, students will consider work written from a number of imperial/colonial
positions, beginning with early texts by the colonial administrator, Edmund Spenser, through nineteenthand twentieth-century essays, poems, drama, and novels, written from both sides of the colonial and
sectarian divide, up to contemporary representations of the Northern Irish “Troubles”.
Readings in relevant theoretical background, which will be provided
Edmund Spenser, excerpts from A View of the Present State of Ireland and The Faerie Queene, which will be
provided
Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal (1729) and Drapier’s Letter IV: A Letter to the Whole People of Ireland (1724), which will
be provided
Readings relating to colonialism and landscape, which will be provided
Maria Edgeworth, Castle Rackrent. Intr. by Kathryn Kirkpatrick. Oxford, 1995
Elizabeth Bowen, The Last September. London: Vintage, 1998
Molly Keane, Good Behaviour. London: Virago, 2012
John McGahern, Amongst Women. London: Faber and Faber, 2008
2. EN6050 Space and Place
What is the relationship between space and place in Irish writing and film? What role do abstract spatial coordinates (the West, the city, the North) play in Irish culture and how do these become realized as particular
places within literature and film? This module addresses the richly complex representation of space and
place in Irish writing and film via the close analysis of three case studies, which also serve to address related
issues of history, politics and genre. The first of these concerns the period of Irish romanticism; the second
the region of Munster; and the third the landscapes of Irish film. The chosen texts will be analysed in the
context of theoretical questions drawn from ecocriticism, psychogeography, cultural geography, urban
studies and cartography.
Readings in relevant theoretical background, which will be provided
Tim Robinson, Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage. London: Faber and Faber, 2008
William Drennan, poems, which will be provided
Oliver Goldsmith, “The Deserted Village”, which is available on 'archive.org' in the 1855 and 1882 editions which
include illustrations that will be discussed alongside the text
Kate O’Brien, Mary Lavelle. London: Virago, 1998
Elizabeth Bowen, Bowen’s Court. London: Vintage, 1999
Edna O’Brien, Down by the River. London: Phoenix, 2002
Selections of short stories, which will be provided
3. EN6048 Gender and Sexuality
“All nationalities are gendered; all are invented; and all are dangerous”, Anne McClintock argues,
“dangerous …in the sense that they represent relations to political power and to the technologies of
violence”. Gender and sexuality mark a critical juncture of history, politics, the body, the individual, and
the state in Irish culture, a nexus of anxiety and interest in the ongoing project of defining “Irishness”.
Historically Ireland has been figured as female, both in colonial discourse and nationalist iconography, while
in the twentieth century, on both sides of the border after partition, strict sexual norms based on religious
values came to be associated with national character. Through discussion of the texts in this section of the
course, students will examine the relationship between gender, sexuality, culture, and nation, and the
queering of those categories into the twenty-first century.
Readings in relevant theoretical background, which will be provided
Selections of poetry, which will be provided
Emily Lawless Grania; or, the Story of an Island. 1891. Available to purchase as a
photocopy
Kate O’Brien. The Land of Spices. London: Virago, 2002
Colm Tóibín. The Master. London: Picador, 2004
Éilis Ní Dhuibhne, The Dancers Dancing. Belfast: Blackstaff, 2007
Tom McIntyre, The Great Hunger: Poem into Play. Mullingar: Lilliput, 1988 [or 2002 edition]
Marina Carr, Woman and Scarecrow. Oldcastle: Gallery Press, 2006
4. EN6049 Gothic to Modernism
“Nothing in Ireland is ever over”, remarked Elizabeth Bowen. This module addresses connections between
gothic and avant-garde forms across a long century of extraordinary formal innovation and aesthetic
achievement in Irish writing. The period under discussion saw revolution, Union, famine, war and a bitter
struggle for political independence, and produced texts that respond to their moment in astonishingly
innovative ways. Yet conventional periodization itself is called into question by the module’s framing of
fictional, dramatic and poetic texts which move between romantic, gothic, realist and modernist modes and
which present a series of strong challenges to conventional literary history. The module addresses texts
which are thus fully involved in their own turbulent moment, but also open up breaches between past and
present and which enable the return of a repressed past. The kinds of stylistic and formal innovation which
emerge from such encounters are a particular concern here. Questions and topics to be addressed include:
form, history, style, identity, sectarianism, class, gender, bodies, material culture and technology.
Readings in relevant theoretical background, which will be provided
Edmund Burke, Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and
Beautiful, selection to be provided
Gerald Griffin, “The Brown Man”, and “The Buried Legs”, which will be provided
James Clarence Mangan, poems, which will be provided
Sheridan Le Fanu, In a Glass Darkly, any edition
W.B. Yeats, poetry, Purgatory and The Words Upon the Window-Pane, which will be provided
James Joyce, “The Dead”, which will be provided
Elizabeth Bowen, “The Back Drawing Room”; “Mysterious Kor”, which will be provided
Samuel Beckett, Murphy. London: Faber and Faber, 2008
Note: Subject to the approval of the relevant MA programme co-ordinators, students may substitute
one of the above 10-credit subject modules with another MA English 10-credit subject module.
Essay Schedule and Deadlines
Essay 1. Irish Culture: Colonial, Postcolonial, Transnational
Titles available: 9 October 2014. Essays due: 13 November 2014.
Essay 2. Space and Place
Titles available: 20 November 2014. Essays due: 15 January 2015.
Essay 3: Gender and Sexuality
Titles available: 5 February 2015. Essays due: 12 March 2015.
Essay 4: Gothic to Modernism
Titles available: 19 March 2015. Essays due: 16 April 2015.
At least one of the four essays must be based on a title devised by the student her/himself in consultation
with the relevant member of the teaching team.
Course Team and Research Interests
Dr Mary Breen (MB): m.breen@ucc.ie
Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British and Irish life-writing; book history; the novel in Ireland from 1800 to the
present day.
Professor Claire Connolly (CC): claireconnolly@ucc.ie
Irish writing; the novel in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; romanticism in Ireland, Scotland and Wales;
Welsh-Irish cultural exchanges; Ireland and cultural theory.
Professor Patricia Coughlan (PC): pat.coughlan@ucc.ie
Feminist approaches to Irish literature and culture; psychoanalysis and Irish literature; Irish writing after 1960,
especially representations of gender; Irish modernist poetry, especially Beckett; Irish women writers, 1920s-50s;
sixteenth- and seventeenth-century colonial discourse on Ireland.
Professor Patrick Crotty (PCr): p.j.crotty@abdn.ac.uk
Modern and contemporary poetry; the poetic traditions of Ireland and Scotland (in English, Irish, Scots, Gaelic etc);
Anglo-Welsh literature; Hugh MacDiarmid; John McGahern; Seamus Heaney; the links between the Celtic and
Anglophone literatures of Britain and Ireland; American poetry; translating poetry.
Professor Alex Davis (AD): a.davis@ucc.ie
Anglophone poetry from the 1890s to the present day; literary modernism and its inheritance; modern Irish writing in
English.
Dr Marie Kelly (MK): kelly.marie@ucc.ie
Theatre casting; the multiple realities of theatre performance (consciousness, the unconscious and the transcendental);
the theatre of Tom MacIntyre.
Dr Heather Laird (HL): h.laird@ucc.ie
Postcolonial literature and theory; Irish cultural criticism; theories and practices of resistance; law and literature;
connections between India and Ireland; Irish Land War fiction; the writings of John McGahern.
Dr Liam Lanigan (LL): llanigan@ucc.ie
Irish modernism; literature and the city; the contemporary Irish novel; urban theory; modernist studies; Joyce; urban
planning in Irish writing.
Dr. Hilary Lennon (HLe): h.lennon@ucc.ie
The short story in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; Irish short fiction; the literary letter in Ireland; theories and
histories of the modern literary letter; connections between realism and modernism in Irish writing.
Dr Barry Monahan (BM): B.Monahan@ucc.ie
The relationship between the Abbey Theatre and film; contemporary Irish cinema, including films by Lenny
Abrahamson.
Dr Orla Murphy (OM): o.murphy@ucc.ie
Laser scanning; exploring the integration of emerging digital technologies (with)in the humanities; theorising
digitisation and digital reading cultures; Anglo-Saxon culture; Old English language; insular art and culture;
representation; epigraphy; palaeography; codicology; textual transmission from the cusp of orality to contemporary
web texts.
Dr Maureen O’Connor (MOC): maureen.oconnor@ucc.ie
Nineteenth- and twentieth-century Irish women’s writing; the Irish New Woman; theories of comedy and Irish
writing; animals in literature; ecofeminism/ecocriticism and Irish literature; the dandy in American, Irish, and British
culture.
Dr Clíona Ó Gallchoir (CÓG): C.Gallchoir@ucc.ie
Irish women’s writing; Irish and British eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writing; the novel in Ireland; post-colonial
writing; children’s literature.
Dr Anna Pilz (AP): A.Pilz@liverpool.ac.uk
Nineteenth-century Irish writing; the Irish Literary Revival; Irish drama and theatre history; landscapes in Irish
literature and art; Northern Irish writing; literary history; cultural geography; genetic criticism.
Dr Éibhear Walshe (EW): E.Walshe@ucc.ie
Modern Irish fiction and drama; Irish literary criticism, Irish biography; Irish cultural history; the interconnections
between politics, literature and the representations of sexuality.
EN6047/EN6048/EN6049/EN6050 TIMETABLE
Week beginning
8 September 2014
15 September
22 September
29 September
6 October
13 October
20 October
27 October
3 November
10 November
17 November
24 November
Tuesday 4-6
ORB 1.65
Irish Culture: Colonial, Postcolonial,
Transnational
No Class
Theories HL
Edmund Spenser HL
Jonathan Swift COG
Elizabeth Bowen LL
John McGahern PCr
Thursday 4-6
ORB 1.65
Introductory Class Meeting
Theories HL/Peer Teaching
Colonialism and Landscape AP
(Rescheduled for Weds 1 Oct, 46)
Maria Edgeworth CC
Molly Keane MB
In the Name of the Father BM
Reading Week
Space and Place
Theories MOC
William Drennan COG
Kate O’Brien EW
Edna O’Brien MOC
The Quiet Man BM
Tim Robinson MOC
Oliver Goldsmith AP
Elizabeth Bowen EW
Cork and the Short Story HLe
Garage BM
Christmas Break
12 January 2015
19 January
26 January
2 February
9 February
16 February
23 February
2 March
9 March
16 March
23 March
30 March
Gender and Sexuality
Theories PC
Contemporary Poetry PC
Kate O’Brien MB
Éilis Ní Dhuibhne MOC
Marina Carr MK
Gothic to Modernism
Theories and Tropes CC
Theories PC
Emily Lawless CÓG
Colm Tóibín MB
Tom MacIntyre MK
Goldfish Memory BM
Edmund Burke CC
Reading Week
Gerald Griffin CC
Sheridan Le Fanu CC
James Joyce HL
Samuel Beckett AD
Thesis Proposal Presentations
James Clarence Mangan CC/AD
W.B. Yeats AD
Elizabeth Bowen CC
Modernist Gothic AD
Thesis Proposal Presentations
Marking Scale and Assessment
Marking Scale
First Honours: 70+
Second Honours, Grade I: 60-69
Second Honours, Grade II: 50-59
Pass: 40-50
Submission of Written Work
All written work must be typed (word-processed), and presented double-spaced with adequate
margins for comment. All essays and dissertations must be provided with references (footnotes,
endnotes, or other referencing system) in accordance with the MLA Handbook (see Contemporary
Literary Research Skills module), and a complete, and correctly formatted bibliography.
Each essay should be 3, 000 words. Please hand in one hardcopy of your essay to the School of
English office before 4 p.m. on the day it is due, accompanied by a Turnitin receipt. Any late
essay should be accompanied by a relevant medical certificate or written evidence of other
significant difficulties that have interrupted work.
Plagiarism
Plagiarised work will be treated under the rules of the Department of English, and UCC’s
regulations. Plagiarism is likely to result in the mark of ‘0’ and failure of the whole course. Please
be especially careful in using sources from the internet. If you are unsure about what constitutes
plagiarism, the rules for referencing, or which referencing system to use, please consult us.
Background Reading:
Brown, Terence. Ireland: A Social and Cultural History, 1922-2001 (2004).
Cairnes, David and Shaun Richards. Writing Ireland: Colonialism, Nationalism and
Culture (1988).
Carroll, Clare and Patricia King (eds). Ireland and Postcolonial Theory (2003).
Cleary, Joe. Outrageous Fortune: Capital and Culture in Modern Ireland (2006).
Cleary, Joe, and Claire Connolly (eds). The Cambridge Companion to Modern Irish
Culture (2005).
Connolly, Claire (ed.). Theorizing Ireland (2003).
Coughlan, Patricia, and Tina O’Toole (eds). Irish Literature: Feminist Perspectives (2008).
Deane, Seamus. A Short History of Irish Literature (1986).
Eagleton, Terry. Heathcliff and the Great Hunger: Studies in Irish Culture (1995).
Innes, Catherine Lynette. Woman and Nation in Irish Literature and Society, 1880-1935
(1994).
Gibbons, Luke. Transformations in Irish Culture (1996).
Kiberd, Declan. Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation (1995).
Kelleher, Margaret. The Feminization of Famine: Expressions of the Inexpressible? (1997).
Lloyd, David. Irish Culture and Colonial Modernity, 1800-2000 (2011).
Longley, Edna. The Living Stream: Literature and Revisionism in Ireland (1994).
McCarthy, Conor. Modernisation: Crisis and Culture in Ireland, 1969-1992 (2000).
McCormack, William John. Ascendancy and Tradition in Anglo-Irish Literary History:
from 1789 to 1939 (1985).
Meaney, Gerardine. Gender, Ireland and Cultural Change (2009).
Quigley, Mark. Empire’s Wake: Postcolonial Irish Writing and the Politics of Literary Form
(2013).
Vance, Norman. Irish Literature: A Social History: Tradition, Identity and Difference
(1990).
Wills, Clair. That Neutral Island: A Cultural History of Ireland during the Second World
War (2007).