
Writing Lough Derg
From William Carleton to Seamus Heaney
Peggy O'Brien(Author)
Syracuse University Press
Will be published approx. on 18. September 2006
Book
Paperback/Softback
342 pages
978-0-8156-3098-2 (ISBN)
Description
The overarching purpose of this volume is to show how a discrete tradition of writing about Lough Derg helped contemporary Irish poets rescue, metaphysical inquiry from the grip of nationalism. Linked with the supernatural from pagan times, Lough Derg had by the early twentieth century become an icon of the fusion of the Catholic Church and the Irish nation. Surveying literary treatments of Lough Derg from William Carleton through Denis Devlin, Patrick Kavanagh, and ultimately Seamus Heaney, Peggy O'Brien addresses the role of spirituality in an increasingly cosmopolitan, postmodern, post-Catholic Ireland. O'Brien's extended consideration of Heaney culminates in an insightful juxtaposition with Czeslaw Milosz, the Polish poet who also struggled with the conflation of Catholicism and patriotism.
Reviews / Votes
O'Brien's prose is brilliant. She possesses a marvelous facility for imaging explanations.... Her style is characteristically rich and economical, beautifully carrying her lucid and subtle arguments." - Audrey Eyler, Pacific Lutheran UniversityMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Dimensions
Height: 257 mm
Width: 180 mm
Thickness: 18 mm
Weight
652 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8156-3098-2 (9780815630982)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Peggy O'Brien is professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is the editor of the Book of Irish Women's Poetry, 1969-2000, and regularly publishes essays on contemporary Irish poetry.