Major Irish Authors: Yeats, Joyce & Beckett

Course Description

Yeats, Joyce and Beckett are indeed the ‘major Irish writers’ - those to whom the world pays most attention and whose "Irishnes" is part of the way that they are interpreted and valued. Mor specifically, they are the greatest of the modern Irish writers, though many would include the names of Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw, John Millington Synge or even Sean O'Casey in such a list while others would cast a vote for Bram Stoker - author of the best-known horror story of all in his novel Dracula - not to mention Seamus Heaney, Brian Friel, John Banville or Colm Toibin in our own time. Of earlier Irish writers, it is Jonathan Swift who comes immediately to mind; but he is by definition an "Anglo-Irish" writer - that is, a representative of a class and culture that held the stage during the colonial chapter of Irish history, whereas the three whom we are about to study Irish in a characteristically (if complex) modern way.

In this course we will be examining a selection of their poetry, drama, and fiction while touching on their lives and careers the better to understand and appreciate their works, but also because we are interested in the light they shed on the society from which they sprang, and to which they have have attracted so much interest in the eyes of the world. In a certain sense, Ireland is its writers since the figure that the country cuts in the world is so largely shaped by the fact that it has produced an unusual number of Nobel prize-winners and a "standing army" of less famous writers out of all proportion to the scale of its population.

If our three writers alone were taken as a sample, it would mean that there is a literary genius in the first rank of work-writers for every million souls in the population. That is as if Manchester or Sao Paolo had three Nobel prize-winners - though, for the record, it should be noted that the Irish holders of that prize are Shaw, Yeats, Beckett and Seamus Heaney and not James Joyce who was - unfairly? - overlooked by the Swedish judges of the award. Why so many great writers in the relatively short period 1925 (G. B Shaw) to 1995 (Heaney)? It will be part of our quest to identify the factors in the national life of Ireland - its cultural dynamics - which have caused the country to produce such a sophisticated tradition of literary representation in the twentieth century and beyond.

In one sense it is odd to call the three authors in question Irish writers at all. Each of them was born in Ireland but none of them stayed there for very long. Yeats went to school in London and continually returned there for much of the year throughout his life, recognising it as the real centre of English-language culture of which his intense devotion to the idea of Irish literature was, after all, a specialist concern. (We will consider more closely what it meant for him to become an Irish writer rather than a British one.) By contrast, both Joyce and Beckett moved to continental Europe in youthful rebellion against the Ireland of their day. In that sense, both were cosmopolitan where Yeats was metropolitan. Yet Joyce and Beckett, though they associated closely in Paris during the 1920s, were divided by their backgrounds: Joyce was a Irish Catholic by birth (if virulently anti-clerical), while Beckett was a member of a middle-class Protestant and a member of a social group that had retained a good deal of financial and professional security in the predominantly Catholic state around them.

Given the complexities of national identity in modern Ireland - especially in the literary world where values are often turned surprisingly on their head - a definite attempt will be made in this course to situate each of the three writers in question in terms of the social and cultural formations from which they stemmed, but also to form an estimate of their individual ways of engaging with "Irishness" in the light of their class-origins and their intellectual ideals.  In that sense, the literary achievement of each will be interrogated from a postcolonial standpoint. Yet none of these writers, as we will emphatically find out, can simply be regarded as the ‘voice’ of the modern nation coming out of colonial bondage and the strangle-hold of British imperial power; nor is any one of them a casebook study of literary Unionism or literary Nationalism either - where "Unionism" signifies a continuing attachment to British society and "Nationalism" stands for a sympathy or even an engagement in the process of political separatism.

An interest in Irish history and culture will certainly help you get to grips with these writers, but it is part of their achievement that they can be read and enjoyed without regard to their national context. Some students will prefer to view ee them in the context of international Modernism; others will read them in the wider contexts of British or even European literary history, or else as world-class writers who simply cannot be ignored by educated readers in any culture or language. There is room, too, for both philosophical approaches which concentrate on the aesthetic or even the hermetic sense of the texts themselves. Yet, whether we take a liberal-humanist (e.g., belles-lettriste) approach or a materialism (e.g., post-structuralist) approach, these three Irish authors were masters of poetry and prose from whom the world has learnt what literature is, and what it does and therefore part of a cultural canon against which our critical ideas must be tested and judged.

A final word about materials. I will make every effort to supply you with digital copies of all texts displayed in class using the email network of your Faculty at UFRN. I will also mirror those materials on a dedicated website at www.ricorso.net/tx/Authors - where you are reading this, in fact! In addition, you can find a much wider selection of materials relating to each author on the course (along with hundreds of others), on the RICORSO website which I have compiled for students of Irish literary at www.ricorso.net. No password is necessary to access the latter website at the present moment, but in the future you may be asked for one. If so, the password will be ricorso/dalriada - and if that changes you can get an update from The Brazilian Association for Irish Studies [ABEI], or from its members in the Faculty of Literature and Languages at UFRN.

If you are interested in continuing with the study of Irish writers, why not join Associação Brasileira de Estudos Irlandeses [ABEI]? This year, the Association is holding the "7th Symposium of Irish Studies in South America" on August 27th-29th at UFRN (Natal). For further details about that event and everything relating to ABEI (which has its own internationally-respected journal) at their website - online

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Aims & Objectives
On completion of the course you can expect to have:
  • gained a familiarity with the major works of the three named writers in the genres of poetry, prose and drama;
  • placed their work in its historical and cultural contexts and appraised their value and significance accordingly;
  • become familiar with a most important critical responses and reached your own view (identical or different);
  • sharpened your analytical skills and powers of argument and practised your ability to respond to English-language texts in spoken/written contexts.
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    Study Methods
    Course meetings will be held on Mondays and Wednesdays during each of three successive weeks in August, between 2.30-5.00 pm, with an interval for refreshment after the first hour. In the second week only the Monday meeting will be held since I am travelling to Sao Paolo with some other members of your University to participate in a conference on James Joyce.

     Each meeting will consist of a) a 1-hour lecture, to be followed by b) an account of sample texts by the writer in question. The second (b) may take the form of question and answer if you wish. You are invited to seek clarification or state your opinions about any matter raised in either part of the meeting during Office Hours on at the same period on Thursdays (i.e., 2.30-5.00 pm) when I will be available in the same teaching room.

    Evaluation
    Those who are taking the course for credit points are expected to provide good attendance and to submit work at the end of the course - the date to be determined later - answering to one of two possible formats:

    a) an essay of 5 pages (or 1,000-1,500 words) briefly addressing a topic of your own choosing in the subject area and dealing with ONE or MORE of the authors;

    b) A workbook exhibiting a record of the information and interpretation(s) gathered during the progress of the course.

    The first option may be completed in English or Portuguese but the second option must be completed in English. (See further details.)

    Note: There is a mini-test in the form of samples of prose writing by each of our three authors for identification on the attached page. Depending on your response in class, I am thinking of adding this to the Evaluation options.

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    Reading List & Other Resources

    Note: Online anthologies of each author are available under "Resources" > [author name] on this website. These chiefly consist of extracts - longer or shorter - taken from the texts under discussion and some others, but should not be allowed to prevent you from examining the originals in book form. Sets of the complete works of Yeats and Joyce are available in the RICORSO Library [online]. You will need a password to access parts of the Library -ricorso/dalriada.


    Primary texts (literary works)

    W. B. Yeats

    [Collected and selected editions by Richard Finneran, Daniel Albright, Timothy Webb, et al., may also be used.
    E.g.,—

    Selected Poems, ed. A. N. Jeffares (Gill & Macmillan)
    Selected Plays, ed. A. N. Jeffares (Gill & Macmillan)
    Selected Prose, ed. A. N. Jeffares (Gill & Macmillan)
    Writings on Irish Folklore, Legend, and Myth, ed., Robert Welch (Penguin)

    Note: a fuller bibliography of secondary reading (i.e., Criticism) can be found under "Resources" > W. B. Yeats > Bibliography [as attached].

    James Joyce
    Dubliners
    (Penguin)
    A Portrait of the Artist (Penguin)
    Ulysses: Student Edition (Penguin)
    [Other editions of the works of Joyce may also be used.]

    Note: a fuller bibliography of secondary reading (i.e., Criticism) can be found under "Resources" > W. B. Yeats > Bibliography [as attached].

    Samuel Beckett
    The Complete Dramatic Works
    (Faber & Faber)
    The Beckett Trilogy (Calder & Boyars)
    The Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (Faber & Faber)

    Note: a fuller bibliography of secondary reading (i.e., Criticism) can be found under "Resources" > W. B. Yeats > Bibliography [as attached].

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    Secondary texts (Criticism)

    W. B. Yeats
    John Unterecker, A Reader’s Guide to W. B. Yeats (1959).
    T. R. Henn, The Lonely Tower: Studies in the Poetry of Yeats [rev. edn.] (1965).
    Louis MacNeice, The Poetry of W. B. Yeats [rep. edn.] (1967).
    A. Norman Jeffares, A Commentary on The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (1968)
    —& A. S. Knowland, A Commentary on the Plays of W. B. Yeats (1975).
    A. N. Jeffares, W. B. Yeats: A New Life (1988).
    Mary Helen Thuente, W. B. Yeats and Irish Folklore (1980).
    Harold Bloom, Yeats (OUP 1970; London: Fontana 1971).
    Denis Donoghue, Yeats (Fontana 1971).
    Richard Ellmann, Yeats: The Man and the Masks [rev. edn.] (1979).
    —, The Identity of Yeats [rep. edn.] (1983).
    Richard Kain, Dublin in the Age of W. B. Yeats and James Joyce (1972).
    Frank Tuohy, Yeats: An Illustrated Biography [rep.edn.] (1991).
    Alasdair D. F. Macrae, W. B. Yeats: A Literary Life (1994).
    Jonathan Allison, ed., Yeats’s Political Identities: Selected Essays (1996).
    R. F. Foster, W. B. Yeats: A Life, 2 Vols. [‘The Apprentice Mage’ & ‘The Arch-Poet 1915-1939’ (1996 & 2003).
    Brenda Maddox, George’s Ghosts: A New Life of W. B. Yeats (1999).
    Terence Brown, W. B. Yeats: A Critical Life (1999).
    Marjorie Howes & John Kelly, The Cambridge Companion to W. B. Yeats (2004).

    James Joyce
    Stuart Gilbert, James Joyce’s “Ulysses” (1930).
    Frank Budgen, James Joyce & the Making of “Ulysses” (1934).
    Richard M. Kain, Fabulous Voyager: James Joyce’s “Ulysses” (1947).
    S. L. Goldberg, The Classical Temper: A Study of James Joyce’s “Ulysses” (1961).
    Clive Hart, ed., James Joyce’s “Dubliners”: Critical Essays (1969).
    Richard Ellmann, The Consciousness of Joyce (1977).
    —, James Joyce [rev. edn.] (1982) [the standard biography].
    Hugh Kenner, “Ulysses” (1980).
    Derek Attridge & Daniel Ferrer, eds., Post-structuralist Joyce: Essays from the French (1984).
    Don Gifford, “Ulysses” Annotated [rev. edn.] (1989).
    Derek Attridge, ed., The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce (1990).
    Alan Roughley, James Joyce and Critical Theory: An Introduction (1991).
    Morris Beja, James Joyce: A Literary Life (1992).
    James Fairhall, James Joyce and the Question of History (1993).
    Emer Nolan, James Joyce and Nationalism (1995).
    Vincent J. Cheng, Joyce, Race, and Empire (1995).
    Robert Spoo, James Joyce and the Language of History: Dedalus’ Nightmare (1995).
    Michael Groden, Ulysses in Progress (1977)
    Margot Norris, A Companion to James Joyce’s Ulysses (1998).
    Mark A. Wollaeger, ed., James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: A Casebook (2003).
    Jean-Michel Rabaté, ed., James Joyce Studies [Palgrave Advances Studies] (2004).
    Eric Bulson, Cambridge Introduction to James Joyce (2006).
    Bruce Stewart , “James Joyce” [chap.], in Jack Foster, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Irish Novel (2006).
    —, James Joyce [V.I.P. Series] (2007).

    Samuel Beckett
    John Fletcher, The Novels of Samuel Beckett [rev. edn.] (1970).
    Hugh Kenner, Samuel Beckett: A Critical Study (1962).
    —, A Reader’s Guide to Samuel Beckett (1973).
    Ruby Cohn, Back to Beckett [rep. edn.] (1976).
    Steven Connor, Samuel Beckett: Repetition, Theory and Text (1988).
    Christopher Ricks, Beckett’s Dying Words (1990).
    John Harrington, The Irish Beckett (1991).
    Paul Davies, The Ideal Real: Beckett’s Fiction and Imagination (1994).
    John Pilling, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Beckett (1994).
    James Knowlson, Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (1996).
    Anthony Cronin, Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist (1996).
    R. B. Kershner, ed., Joyce and Popular Culture (1996).
    David Pattie, The Complete Critical Guide to Samuel Beckett (2000).
    Lois Oppenheim, ed., Beckett Studies [Palgrave Advances Series] (2004).
    C. J. Ackerley & S. E. Gontarski, eds., The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett: A Reader’s Guide to his Works, Life, and Thought (2004).
    Ronan McDonald, ed., The Cambridge Introduction to Samuel Beckett (2006).

    General Studies (incl. significant remarks on Joyce)
    Malcolm Brown, The Politics of Irish Literature: From Thomas Davis to W. B. Yeats (1972)
    Richard Ellmann, Wilde, Yeats, Joyce and Beckett: Four Dubliners (1982).
    Seamus Deane, Celtic Revivals: Essays in Modern Irish Literature 1880-1980 (1986).
    David Cairns , & Shaun Richards, Writing Ireland: Colonialism, Nationalism and Culture (1988).
    Richard Kain, Dublin in the Age of W. B. Yeats and James Joyce [rep. edn.] (1992).
    Robert Welch, Changing States: Transformations in Modern Irish Writing (1993).
    George J. Watson, Irish Identity and the Literary Revival [rev. edn.] (1995).

    Literary History and Reference Works
    Terence Brown, Ireland: A Social and Cultural History, 1922-1979 (1981).
    Seamus Deane, A Short History of Irish Literature (1982).
    Robert Hogan, ed., Dictionary of Irish Literature, 2 vols. (1996).
    Terence Brown, Ireland: A Social and Cultural History, 1922-1979 (1981).
    Robert Welch, ed., The Oxford Companion to Irish Literature , asst. ed. Bruce Stewart (1996).
    John Wilson Foster, Fictions of the Irish Revival: A Changling Art (1987).
    Norman Vance, Irish Literature: A Social History (1990).
    Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland: The Literature of a Modern Nation (1995).
    Joe Cleary & Claire Connolly, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Modern Irish Culture (2005).
    Margaret Kelleher & Phillip O’Leary, eds., The Cambridge History of Irish Literature (2005).

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