Review: 20%Your review can be a review of a novel, two or more short stories, a series of poems, or two or more films we are considering this semester. Your review should be between 6 and 8 double spaced typed pages. You must highlight the central themes, techniques and style of the work. Your review is due on October 25th.
Vlog/Blog/Journal: 30%You may vlog, blog or journal this submission on Irish literature, culture, art, and screen. Students are encouraged to engage the crossover points of Irish high literacy and culture with history and popular culture. If you choose to vlog or blog you may include music, as well as painting, film (fiction, docs, streaming series), photography, sculpture, dance and performance art). Irish literature and culture has had a wide and profound impact on high and popular culture from Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats and James Joyce to Bono, Sinead O’Connor and Panti Bliss, the Queen of Ireland. This assignment, then, allows students to connect with a variety of these influences and expressions, all of which are part of the moveable feast that Irish culture has become.
Final Exam 40%Students will be given a series of questions on the last day of class and asked to write two short essays either as a take home or an in-class exam.
Readings, Films, Docs, Streaming:Almost all of the material covered in class is available on-line but a series of readings (including novels) will be provided by the professor.
Lectures I to 4 All that History and all that Jazz: from pre-historic peoples to the Celts (Paul Durcan’s, Before the Celtic Yoke), Vikings, Normans and Sasanach (English). Epics and lyrics: from the The Book of Kells, to the Tain Bo Cúailgne and Pangur Ban; Tomm Moore’s The Secret of Kells. Tolkein, the Celts and LOTR. “What whiteness shall we add to this whiteness,what candour?” Celtic Crosses, white supremacy, prisons, and St. George.
Lectures: 5 to 8 From indigenous Catholic Celts to the colonized Protestant state:Strongbow, Aoife and the Statues of Kilkenny, Walter Raleigh, the potato and Youghal; Spencer, The Faerie Queen, Kilcolman Castle, and A View of the Present State of Ireland (1596); Shakespeare, Henry V, Fluellen and Captain Macmorris; Tomm Moore’s Wolf Walkers; Queen Elizabeth I, Shane and Hugh O’Neill (Albrecht Durer and Sean O’Faolain). Betty Davis as Bess. Battle of Kinsale.
Lectures 9 to 12Flight of the Earls, the continental connection (again); Siege of Derry; Big Houses, serfs and the clachan culture; Brian Merriman and the Midnight Court;Penal Laws, Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, Modest Proposal; Edmund Burke and the French Revolution. 1798: Imperial Britain, Rome and Catholic hegemongy. Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Robert Emmet and Wolf Tone: W.B. Yeats’ September 1913.The Advent of the Orange Order. Brian Friel’s Translations, back to the future.
Lectures 13 to 16The Great Famine, Daniel O’Connell, and Repeal of the Union. New Brunswick Irish and Black 47: Gangs of New York, (Martin Scorsese). Heathcliff and the Great Hunger (Terry Eagleton) The Fenian Movement, the Land War, the Gaelic Revival, and the Irish Renaissance. Charles Stewart Parnell (James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist) Douglas Hyde, Lady Gregory, Gore Booth, Bram Stoker, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw.
Lectures: 17 to 20The Irish Revolution from the Land War to the Civil War: Yeats, Maude Gonne and the Abbey Theatre, James Joyce, Sean O’Casey, O’Connor, O’Faolain, Michael Collins (Neil Jordan) Constance Gore Booth (Countess Markiewicz)
Lectures 21 to 26 From the Free State to the Anglo-Irish AccordDeValera and the theocratic state: Magdalene Laundries and the plight of women; Patrick Kavanagh, Seamus Heaney, Nell McCafferty, Paul Durcan, Neil Jordan, Jim Sheridan and Daniel Day Lewis; Sinead O’Connor, Panti Bliss, Gay Rights, Abortion and Climate Change.