The Great War in Irish Poetry: W. B. Yeats to Michael Longley

The Great War in Irish Poetry: W. B. Yeats to Michael Longley

The Great War in Irish Poetry explores the impact of the First World War on the work of W. B. Yeats, Robert Graves, and Louis MacNeice in the period 1914-45, and on three contemporary Northern Irish poets, Derek Mahon, Seamus Heaney, and Michael Longley. Its concern is to place their work, and memory of the Great War, in the context of Irish culture and politics in the twentieth century. The historical background to Irish involvement in the Great War is explained, as are the ways in which some of the events of 1912-1920--the Home Rule crisis, the loss of the Titanic, the Battle of the Somme, the Easter Rising--still reverberate in the politics of remembrance in Northern Ireland. While the Great War is perceived as central to English culture, and its literature holds a privileged position in the English literary canon, the centrality of the Great War to Irish writing has seldom been acknowledged. This book is concerned with the extent to which recognition of the importance of the Great War in Irish writing has become a casualty of competing versions of the literary canon. It shows that, despite complications in Irish domestic politics which led to the repression of "official memory" of the Great War in Ireland, Irish poets, particularly those writing in the "troubled" Northern Ireland of the last thirty years, have been drawn throughout the century to the events and images of 1914-18. "Detailed and authoritative... convincing and subtly argued proof of its key propositions about the War's imaginative potency... Brearton's criticism makes a strong case for the status of Northern Irish poetry as especially revealing. Brearton's eloquent, agile, and intellectually daring book transforms 'the debate' about Irish poetry in a decisive way."--Times Literary Supplement "A skilful, illuminating writer on the influence of the Great War in Irish poetry."--Irish Studies Review "Brearton's well-researched and intelligently argued book makes a convincing argument about the engagement of Irish poets with this defining event of the twentieth century."--English Literature in Transition 1880-1920 "Detailed and authoritative... convincing and subtly argued proof of its key propositions about the War's imaginative potency... Brearton's criticism makes a strong case for the status of Northern Irish poetry as especially revealing. Brearton's eloquent, agile, and intellectually daring book transforms 'the debate' about Irish poetry in a decisive way."--Times Literary Supplement "A skilful, illuminating writer on the influence of the Great War in Irish poetry."--Irish Studies Review "Brearton's well-researched and intelligently argued book makes a convincing argument about the engagement of Irish poets with this defining event of the twentieth century."--English Literature in Transition 1880-1920 "Detailed and authoritative... convincing and subtly argued proof of its key propositions about the War's imaginative potency... Brearton's criticism makes a strong case for the status of Northern Irish poetry as especially revealing. Brearton's eloquent, agile, and intellectually daring book transforms 'the debate' about Irish poetry in a decisive way."--Times Literary Supplement "A skilful, illuminating writer on the influence of the Great War in Irish poetry."--Irish Studies Review "Brearton's well-researched and intelligently argued book makes a convincing argument about the engagement of Irish poets with this defining event of the twentieth century."--English Literature in Transition 1880-1920 "Detailed and authoritative... convincing and subtly argued proof of its key propositions about the War's imaginative potency... Brearton's criticism makes a strong case for the status of Northern Irish poetry as especially revealing. Brearton's eloquent, agile, and intellectually daring book transforms 'the debate' about Irish poetry in a decisive way."--Times Literary Supplement "A skilful, illuminating writer on the influence of the Great War in Irish poetry."--Irish Studies Review "Brearton's well-researched and intelligently argued book makes a convincing argument about the engagement of Irish poets with this defining event of the twentieth century."--English Literature in Transition 1880-1920 "Brearton's criticism makes a strong case for the status of Northern Irish poetry as especially revealing. Brearton's eloquent, agile, and intellectually daring book transforms 'the debate' about Irish poetry in a decisive way."-- Times Literary Supplement Fran Brearton is Lecturer in English, Queens University, Belfast