Irish Literature in the British Context and Beyond

The British context has been a controversial area for those involved in Irish literature and Irish studies. Behind the present volume lies a search for a view from which the frame of the British context as well as the dichotomy between British and Irish literature can be dismantled and disrupted in a most creative sense. It addresses the question of Irish literature’s intrinsic openness by first focusing on the British context that affected Irish literary production through three centuries and then looking beyond it towards the European or global context that lay behind Irish modernism. The book further extends its research to modern Irish poetry and discusses three prominent poets after W.B. Yeats whose works are in and beyond the British context in each different way. Providing unique and new perspectives that have been evolved mostly from an international conference held in Kyoto, Japan, this collection attempts to reassess and explore the values of Irish literature in a global context.

Hiroko Ikeda is associate professor in the Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies, Kyoto University, and a committee member of IASIL Japan and of the Yeats Society of Japan. She holds an M.A. from University College, Dublin and a PhD from Kyoto University. Her primary interest is in Irish poetry in Irish and in English from the 18th century. Her recent articles deal with Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill', Michael Hartnett, W.B. Yeats, and Charlotte Brooke. Kazuo Yokouchi is professor of English Literature at Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan, and a permanent committee member of the James Joyce Society of Japan. He holds a PhD from Kyoto University. His research interests are in British and Irish fiction from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, especially Carlyle, Thackeray, Joyce and Malcolm Lowry.