Syllabus Information

5.1. Methodological overview

See "Learning activities " and "Syllabus".

More information will be provided on the first day of class.

5.2. Learning tasks

• Theoretical lectures.
• Practical lectures.
• Individual work.
• Personal study.
• Assessment activities.

5.3. Syllabus

(27852) Irish Literature

1.The Irish Novel

1.1  Introduction: What is "Irish" literature? What is an "Irish" writer? What is an "Irish" novel?

1.2   Difficulties for the emergence of the Irish novel: the colonial paradigm.

1.3  Formal and structural features of the Irish novel.

1.4  Main genres and themes

Readings: extracts from Castle Rackrent (Maria Edgeworth, 1800), The Wild Irish Girl (Lady Morgan, 1806) and "Carmilla" (Sheridan Le Fanu, 1872)

                  "Themes" (The Novel and the Nation, Gerry Smith, 1997: pp.48-62)

1.5 The Contemporary Irish Novel

Reading: "The Forester's Daughter" (Claire Keegan, Walk the Blue Fields, 2007)

2. The Big House Novel

2.1. The Anglo-Irish Ascendancy and Big House culture.

2.4. Conventions of the genre. Main authors and titles.

Readings:

1) "Conventions of the Big House Novel" (Vera Kreilkamp, The Anglo-Irish Novel and the Big House: 20-25)

2) Yeats's "Upon a House Shaken by The Land Agitation" (Yeats, Responsibilities and Other Poems, 1914)

3) "Coole Park, 1929" (Yeats, The Winding Stair and Other Poems, 1929)

Reading: fragment from John Banville's Birchwood (1973)

2.5. William Trevor's Big House trilogy: a revisionist approach.

Reading: William Trevor's Fools of Fortune (1983)

3. The peasant novel

3.1. The myth of rural Ireland

Extracts: The Quiet Man (John Ford, 1952)and Man of Aran (Robert J. Flaherty, 1934)

Reading: "Bell Wethers" (Jim Phelan [1895-1966] Bog Blossom Stories, London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1948)

3.2. Women in rural Ireland

Reading: O'Hara, Patricia. "Women in Farm Families: Shedding the Past and Fashioning the Future". In Anne Byrne and Madeleine Leonard, eds., Women and Irish Society: A Sociological Reader, Belfast: Beyond the Pale Publications, 1997: 361-376

3.3. Main representatives of the genre

Reading: The Boy in the Moon (Kate O’Riordan, London: Flamingo, 1997)

4.. The "Gothic" novel.

4.1 Characteristics of the genre.

4.2. The Irish Gothic and the Neo-gothic.

4.3. Uncanny ghosts and doubles.

Reading: Patrick McCabe's WinterWood (2006)

5. The Troubles novel

5.1. The historical facts

5.2. Different explanations for the Troubles

Reading: "Religion, ethnicity and colonialism as explanations of the Northern Ireland conflict" (Pamela Clayton. Ed. David Miller, Rethinking Northern Ireland: Culture, Ideology and Nationalism. London and New York: Longman, 1998: 40-54)

5.3. Media and visual representations of the Troubles

5.4. Written fiction: novels and short stories

Readings: William Trevor's "Attracta" (William Trevor, The Collected Stories. London and New York: Penguin, 1992 [1978]: 675-690) and Eugene McCabe's "Victims".

Reading: Eoin McNamee's Resurrection Man

Reading: "The Precession of Simulacra" (Jean Baudrillard. Ed. Bran Nicol, Postmodernism and the Contemporary Novel: A Reader. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2002 [1981]: 91-109)

5.4. Course planning and calendar

See the academic calendar of the University of Zaragoza (http://academico.unizar.es/calendario-academico/calendario) and the website of the Faculty of Philosophy and Arts (Schedule of classes: https://fyl.unizar.es/horario-de-clases#overlay-context=horario-de-clases; Examination schedule: https://fyl.unizar.es/calendario-de-examenes#overlay-context=)

More information will be provided on the first day of class.

5.5. Bibliography and recommended resources