Light, Freedom and Song by David Pierce

Light, Freedom and Song by David Pierce

In this absorbing analysis of modern Irish writing, an acknowledged expert considers the hybrid character of modern Irish writing to show how language, culture and history have been affected by the colonial encounter between Ireland and Britain. Examining the great themes of loss and struggle, Pierce traces the impact on Irish writing of the Great Famine and cultural nationalism and considers the way the work of Ireland's two leading writers, W. B.Yeats and James Joyce, complicate and elucidate our view of 'the harp and the crown'. Looking in particular at two decades taken from either half of the twentieth century, the book explores changes in the cultural landscape in the light of the colonial legacy. It draws a contrast between the West of Ireland in the 1930s, when the new Irish State under de Valera enjoyed its first full independent decade, and the North of Ireland in the 1980s, when the spectre of British imperialism threatened the stability of Ireland as a whole. Bringing the story to the present, Pierce surveys contemporary Irish writing and reflects on the legacy of the colonial encounter and on the passage to a postmodern or postnationalist Ireland in the work of such crucial living writers as John Banville, Derek Mahon and John McGahern.

"'Pierce writes with the kind of magnetism one finds in the words and gestures of a great storyteller" Brendan Kenneally"

David Pierce is professor of English at the University of Leeds. He is the author of James Joyce's Dublin and Yeats' Worlds, both published by Yale University Press.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780300109948
ISBN 10	0300109946
Title	Light, Freedom and Song
Author	David Pierce
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Yale University Press
Year published	2005-10-01
Number of pages	320
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable