Irish Literature: 1800s to the Present
English 3xx
Welles 216
MWF 1:30-2:20
Dr. Rob Doggett
Office: Welles 217 B
Office Hrs: MWF 2:30-3:30
Office Phone: x5221
Email: Doggett@geneseo.edu
Course Overview
It seems history is to blame. . . .
What is the relationship between Ireland’s troubled past, its conflicted present, and the vast, influential,
and celebrated body of literature that this small island nation has produced during the twentieth century?
What does it mean to describe Ireland as a colony and how might postcolonial theory be used to analyze
Irish literature? This course aims to examine these and other questions by investigating links between
history and literature, politics and art, violence and creativity. Unlike the British character Haines who, in
Joyce’s Ulysses, sardonically places the “blame” for Ireland’s vexed present upon an abstract “history,”
we will look carefully at the nuances of that history. Key issues will include: the longstanding material,
social, and psychological impacts of British imperialism; the attempt to “reclaim” Irish identities; the loss
(or eradication) of the Irish language and the problems of translation; the advantages and dangers of
creating a “national” literature; gender and its relationship to Irish identities; the impact of the Catholic
Church; exile, emigration, and the problems of writing “outside” of Ireland; and, ultimately, the artist’s
responsibility in a land that, to this day, remains divided by violence and mistrust.
Learning Outcomes:
In this course students will:
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learn about the major trend, themes, issues, and concerns found in 19th and 20th century Irish
literature
explore the relationship between Irish literature and Ireland’s anomalous position with the UK
the influence of nationalism (in its multiple forms) on Irish literature
the relationship between sectarian violence and Irish literature
Texts
The Real Charlotte by Edith Somerville
Modern Irish Drama, John P. Harrington (Editor) [Abbreviated on the syllabus as MID]
Yeats's Poetry, Drama, and Prose: Authorative Texts, Contexts, Criticism, James Pethica (Editor)
[Abbreviated on the syllabus as Yeats]
Dubliners by James Joyce
The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen
The Oxford Book of Irish Short Stories by William Trevor [Abbreviated on the syllabus as ISS]
North: Poems by Seamus Heaney
The Beauty Queen of Leenane by Martin McDonagh
Pharaoh's Daughter by Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill
Reading in the Dark by Seamus Deane
Grades
You will be graded on a 100 point scale, with the number of possible points available for the course
components listed below. A total of 94 points is required for an A, a total of 90 is required for an A-, 87
for a B+, 84 for a B, 80 for a B-, etc.
Participation
Essay One
Midterm Exam
Annotated Bibliography
Essay Two
Final Exam
20 possible points
10 possible points
10 possible points
10 possible points
25 possible points
25 possible points
Participation
Since this is a course designed for English majors, active participation is assumed. You should come to
class having done the readings and having thought in detail about the readings. You should also be
prepared to answer questions, to raise your own questions, and to comment on the ideas of others.
A note on attendance: Missing class frequently will have a negative impact on your participation
grade, and this will in turn have a negative impact on your final grade. If you miss more than 4 classes,
you will not receive more than 15 participation points. If you miss more than 6 classes, you will not
receive more than 10 participation points. If you miss more than 9 classes, you will not receive more than
5 participation points and may receive 0 points.
Extra Credit
During the month of February, Professor Cope, from the history department, has organized a series of
lecture / film screenings to commemorate the 35th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday” killings. The events
are listed on the syllabus. You will receive 1 extra credit point for each event you attend, provide you
submit a typed, 250-500 word essay in which you share your reactions to the event / film. Any essay that
displays intellectual engagement with the event / film will be accepted, though I reserve the right to not
give credit for essays that are poorly prepared, are marred by extensive spelling or grammar mistakes, etc.
Essays
You will write two essays for the course. I will discuss the particulars of each essay in class, but, as a rule
of thumb, the paper should make an argument about a given work and it should prove that argument
through detailed close reading.
Annotated Bibliography
Early in the semester, you should select one of the authors we are reading this semester. You will then
complete an annotated bibliography on that author. I will provide a separate handout on this assignment
during the semester.
Exams
There will be a midterm exam and a final exam. The best way to study for the exams is to keep up with
the readings throughout the semester and to take notes on readings during our class discussions.
Other concerns
If you have a disability that might impact your classroom performance, please see me. I will assume that
all of the work you turn in for this class is your own. Taking language or ideas from any outside
source without proper attribution constitutes plagiarism. If you engage in plagiarism, you will fail
the assignment, may very well fail the course, and will be referred to the college for disciplinary
actions.
A Note on the Readings
The readings below can be sorted into three groups (and appear in this order on the syllabus for each
class): primary literary works, primary historical works, and secondary criticism. Primary literary works
include the poems, plays, short stories, and novels that will be the main focus of our class discussion.
Primary historical works consistent of documents written at about the same time as the literary work we
are studying for a given class. Secondary criticism consists of essays in contemporary critics analyze a
given literary work, usually from a postcolonial vantage. Since the historical works are designed to
provide a context, it is useful to read them first. However, when doing the readings for class, be sure to
devote enough time to the primary literary works, as they will be the focal point of our discussion. For
works listed on E-Reserve, the password is “IRISH.” It will likely be helpful to you if you print out the
works on e-reserve for class discussion.
Syllabus
January
17
W
Introduction:
What is Postcolonial theory?
Was / Is Ireland a colony?
Inventing Ireland: From Spenser to Goldsmith
19
F
Folktales Collected by Sean O’Sullivan: “The Hour of Death,” “Fionn in Search of his
Youth,” “Cromwell and the Friar,” “The Girl and the Sailor,” “The Four-leafed
Shamrock and the Cock,” “The Cow that ate the Piper,” “Conal and Donal and Taig”
(ISS)
Oliver Goldsmith: “Adventures of a Strolling Player” (ISS)
Edmund Spenser: “A Veue of the Present State of Ireland” (E-Reserve)
Penal Laws: “Laws in Ireland for the Suppression of Popery” (E-Reserve)
Jonathan Swift: “A Proposal for giving Badges to the Beggars in all the Parishes of
Dublin”; “The Present Miserable State of Ireland”: “An Examination of certain Abuses,
Corruptions, and Enormities in the City of Dublin” (E-Reserve)
Declan Kiberd: “A New England Called Ireland” (E-Reserve)
Images of the Irish: the 19th Century
22
M
Maria Edgeworth: “The Limerick Gloves” (ISS)
William Carleton: “The Death of a Devotee” (ISS)
Gerald Griffin: “The Brown Man” (ISS)
Newspaper articles and illustrations on the famine (E-Reserve)
L.P. Curtis: “Simianizing the Irish Celt” (E-Reserve)
Matthew Arnold: Excerpts from “On the Study of Celtic Literature” (E-Reserve)
Seamus Deane: “Arnold, Burke, and the Celts” (E-Reserve)
The Big House
24
W
Sommerville and Ross: The Real Charlotte (1-111)
26
F
Sommerville and Ross: The Real Charlotte (115-202)
29
M
Sommerville and Ross: The Real Charlotte (203-301)
31
W
Sommerville and Ross: The Real Charlotte (302-end)
February
2
F
James Clarence Mangan: “Dark Rosaleen” (E-reserve)
Samuel Ferguson: “Cashel of Munster” (E-reserve)
Seamus O’Kelly: “The Weaver’s Grave” (ISS)
W.B. Yeats: From The Celtic Twilight (Yeats)
Thomas Davis: “Ireland’s People” and “The History of Ireland” (E-Reserve)
Douglas Hyde: “The Necessity for De-Anglicising Ireland” (E-reserve)
Declan Kiberd: “Deanglicanization” (E-reserve)
Extra Credit Session: An Introduction Northern Ireland and the Troubles (Newton
201 at 3:15)
Cultural Nationalism
5
M
W.B. Yeats: “The Song of the Happy Shepherd,” “The Sad Shepherd,” “The Stolen
Child,” “Down by the Salley Gardens,” “To the Rose upon the Rood of Time,” “Fergus
and the Druid,” “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” “When you are Old,” “Who goes with
Fergus,” “To Ireland in the Coming Times” (Yeats)
W.B. Yeats: from Memoirs, “The De-Anglicising of Ireland,” from “The Celtic Element
in Literature,” from “Irish Language and Irish Literature,” from “The Symbolism of
Poetry,” from “Magic” (Yeats)
7
W
W.B. Yeats: “The Hosting of the Sidhe,” “The Lover Tells of the Rose in his Heart,”
“The Song of Wandering Aengus,” “He remembers Forgotten Beauty,” “The Cap and the
Bells,” “He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven,” “The Folly of Being Comforted,” “Never
Give all the Heart” (Yeats)
W.B. Yeats: Cathleen ni Houlihan (Yeats)
W.B. Yeats: “The Irish Literary Theatre” (Yeats)
David Krause: “The Hagiography of Cathleen ni Houlihan” (Yeats)
Elizabeth Cullingford: “Thinking of Her as Ireland” (E-reserve)
9
F
W.B. Yeats: “Adam’s Curse,” “Red Hanrahan’s Song about Ireland” (Yeats)
Augusta Gregory: Spreading the News and The Rising of the Moon (MID)
Augusta Gregory: “Our Irish Theatre” (MID)
John Eglinton: “What Should Be the Subjects of National Drama?” (MID)
Extra Credit Session: Film Screening of Bloody Sunday (Newton 201 at 3:15)
12
M
John Synge: Riders to the Sea, The Playboy of the Western World (Act I); “Preface to
The Playboy of the Western World” (MID)
14
W
John Synge: The Playboy of the Western World (Acts II-III) (MID)
Joseph Holloway: “Journal: 1907” (MID)
W.B. Yeats: “The Controversy over The Playboy of the Western World” (MID)
Seamus Deane: “Synge and Heroism” (E-reserve)
When a People Becomes a Mob
16
F
W.B. Yeats: “No Second Troy,” “On hearing that the Students of our New University,”
“Upon a House shaken by the Land Agitation,” “To a Wealthy Man,” “September 1913,”
“A Coat,” “The Wild Swans at Coole,” “In Memory of Major Robert Gregory,” “An Irish
Airman Foresees his Death,” “The Fisherman,” “The Second Coming” (Yeats)
James Connolly: “Belfast Dockers,” “Some Rambling Remarks” (E-reserve)
Michael North: “W. B. Yeats: Cultural Nationalism” (Yeats)
Seamus Deane: “The Literary Myths of the Revival” (E-reserve)
Extra Credit Session: Film Screening of In the Name of the Father (Newton 201 at
3:15)
Semicolonial Joyce
19
M
James Joyce: “The Sisters,” “An Encounter,” “Araby,” “After the Race”
James Fairhall: “Big-Power Politics and Colonial Economics: The Gordon Bennett Cup
Race and “After the Race” (E-reserve)
21
W
James Joyce: “Eveline,” “A Little Cloud,” “Counterparts,” “Clay”
David Lloyd: “Counterparts: Dubliners, masculinity, and temperance nationalism” (Ereserve)
22
Th
Due: Essay One (Please turn in the essay to my office, 217B Welles, by 4 pm)
23
F
James Joyce: “The Two Gallants,” “A Painful Case,” “Ivy Day in the Committee Room,”
“A Mother”
Vincent Cheng: “The Gratefully Oppressed: Joyce’s Dubliners” (E-reserve)
Extra Credit Session: Film Screening of The Boxer (Newton 201 at 3:15)
26
M
James Joyce: “The Dead”
Revolution and Civil War
28
W
W.B. Yeats: “Easter, 1916,” “On a Political Prisoner,” “Come Gather Round Me
Parnellites,” “Man and the Echo” (Yeats)
James Connolly: “Irish Socialist Republic,” “Forces of Civilization,” “Notes on the
Front: April, 1916” (E-Reserve)
Padraic Pearse: “The Coming Revolution” and “Why we Want Recruits” (E-Reserve)
Elizabeth Cullingford: “Shrill Voice, Accursed Opinions” (E-Reserve)
March
2
F
W. B. Yeats: “Sailing to Byzantium,” “The Tower,” “Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen”
(Yeats)
Sean O’Casey: Juno and the Paycock (Act I) (MID)
Sinn Fein Standing Committee: “The Manifesto of Sinn Fein as prepared for circulation
for the General Election of December, 1918” and “The Manifesto of Sinn Fein as Passed
by the Dublin Castle Censor” (E-Reserve)
Michael Collins: “Advance and Use Our Liberty” (E-Reserve)
5
M
Sean O’Casey: Juno and the Paycock (Act II) (MID)
The Craig-Collins Agreement (E-Reserve)
7
W
W.B. Yeats: “Meditations in Time of Civil War” (Yeats)
Edward Said: “Yeats and Decolonization” (E-reserve)
Rob Doggett: “Writing Out (of) Chaos: Constructions of History in Yeats’s ‘Meditations
in Time of Civil War’ and ‘Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen’” (E-reserve)
9
F
Midterm Exam (In Class Exam: please bring a blue book)
Spring Break
The Big House Again
19
M
Elizabeth Bowen: The Last September (Part I)
R.F. Foster: “Elizabeth Bowen and the Landscape of Childhood” (E-Reserve)
21
W
Elizabeth Bowen: The Last September (Part II)
23
F
Due: Topic for Annotated Bibliography
Elizabeth Bowen: The Last September (Part III)
26
M
W.B. Yeats: “A Prayer for my Daughter,” “Leda and the Swan,” “Among School
Children,” “In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz” (Yeats)
W.B. Yeats: Purgatory (Yeats)
Marjorie Howes: “In the Bedroom of the Big House,” “The Rule of Kindred” (Yeats)
Ireland Under DeValera: Provincialism or Cosmopolitanism?
28
W
Sean O’Faolain: “The Faithless Wife” and “The Sugawn Chair” (ISS)
Frank O’Connor: “Guests of the Nation” and “The Majesty of Law” (ISS)
29
Th
Film Screening of Krapp’s Last Tape (Time and Place TBA)
30
F
Patrick Boyle: “Pastorale” (ISS)
Mary Lavin: “Sarah” (ISS)
William Trevor: “Death in Jerusalem” (ISS) and “The Ballroom of Romance” (EReserve)
April
2
M
Samuel Beckett: Krapp’s Last Tape
John Harrington: “The Irish Beckett”
4
W
Seamus Deane: Reading in the Dark (Part I)
6
F
Seamus Deane: Reading in the Dark (Part II)
9
M
Seamus Deane: Reading in the Dark (Part III)
Seamus Deane: “Dumbness and Eloquence: A note on English as We Write It in Ireland”
(E-Reserve)
The Troubles
11
W
Seamus Heaney: North (ix-xi, 3-27)
12
Th
Due: Annotated Bibliography (Please turn in the annotated bibliography to my
office, 217B Welles, by 4 pm)
13
F
Seamus Heaney: North (28-47)
16
M
Seamus Heaney: North (50-67)
Elmer Andrews: “Gender, Colonialism, Nationalism” (E-Reserve)
A Postcolonial Ireland?
18
W
Martin McDonagh: The Beauty Queen of Leenane
Edna O’Brien: “Irish Revel”
20
F
Martin McDonagh: The Beauty Queen of Leenane
23
M
Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill: Pharaoh’s Daughter (12-61)
25
W
Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill: Pharaoh’s Daughter (62-119)
27
F
Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill: Pharaoh’s Daughter (120-155)
Brian Friel: Translations (Act I)
30
M
Brian Friel: Translations (Acts II-III)
2
W
Due: Essay Two (Please turn in the essay to my office, 217B Welles, by 4 pm)
3
Th
Final Exam (12-3 pm). The exam will take place in 216 Welles. Please bring blue
books.
May
Sample Bibliography
Bowen, Elizabeth. The Last September. Dublin: Anchor, 2000.
Deane, Seamus. Reading in the Dark: A Novel. New York: Vintage, 1998
Heaney, Seamus. North: Poems. London: Faber & Faber, 1985.
Joyce, James. Dubliners New York: Penguin Modern Classics, 2000.
McDonagh, Martin. The Beauty Queen of Leenane. London: Dramatists Play Service, 1998.
Modern Irish Drama. John P. Harrington, ed. London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1991.
Ni Dhomhnaill, Nuala. Pharaoh's Daughter. Wake Forest University Press, 1993.
The Oxford Book of Irish Short Stories. William Trevor, ed. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2002.
Somerville, Edith. The Real Charlotte. London: J.S. Sanders & Co., 1999.
Yeats, W. B. Yeats's Poetry, Drama, and Prose: Authorative Texts, Contexts, Criticism. James
Pethica, ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000.