Irish Literature - Idea Of Ireland (EL307)
Semester 1 / 2014

Texts

TransAtlantic - McCann
y separately published work icon The Great Shame : A Story of the Irish in the Old World and the New Thomas Keneally , Milsons Point : Random House , 1998 Z820476 1998 single work prose (taught in 1 units)

"In the nineteenth century, Ireland lost half of its population to famine, emigration to the United States and Canada, and the forced transportation of convicts to Australia. The forebears of Thomas Keneally, author of Schindler's List, were victims of that tragedy, and in The Great Shame Keneally has written an astonishing, monumental work that tells the full story of the Irish diaspora with the narrative grip and flair of a great novel. Based on unique research among little-known sources, this masterly book surveys eighty years of Irish history through the eyes of political prisoners--including Keneally's ancestors--who left Ireland in chains and eventually found glory, in one form or another, in Australia and America.

We meet William Smith O'Brien, leader of an uprising at the height of the Irish Famine, who rose from solitary confinement in Australia to become the Mandela of his age; Thomas Francis Meagher, whose escape from Australian captivity led to a glittering American career as an orator, a Union general, and governor of Montana; John Mitchel, who became a Confederate newspaper reporter, gave two of his sons to the Southern cause, was imprisoned with Jefferson Davis--and returned to Ireland to become mayor of Tipperary; and John Boyle O'Reilly, who fled a life sentence in Australia to become one of nineteenth-century America's leading literary lights.

Through the lives of many such men and women--famous and obscure, some heroes and some fools (most a little of both), all of them stubborn, acutely sensitive, and devastatingly charming--we become immersed in the Irish experience and its astonishing history. From Ireland to Canada and the United States to the bush towns of Australia, we are plunged into stories of tragedy, survival, and triumph. All are vividly portrayed in Keneally's spellbinding prose, as he reveals the enormous influence the exiled Irish have had on the English-speaking world."

-Publisher's blurb.

Country Girls - O'brien
y separately published work icon Wee Girls : Women Writing from an Irish Perspective Lizz Murphy (editor), North Melbourne : Spinifex Press , 1996 Z816993 1996 anthology poetry short story prose biography (taught in 1 units)

'A selection of writings by women from Ireland, Australia, England, Canada and other countries. This book sets out to show that whether Irish or of Irish descent, they balance ancient history, myth and legend with the fragility and tenuousness of contemporary society.' (Publication summary)

Winterwood - MacCabe
Dubliners - Joyce
Opened Ground - Heaney
y separately published work icon The Harp in the South Ruth Park , 1947 Z1326724 1947 single work novel (taught in 2 units)
— Appears in: The Harp in the South Trilogy 1987;

— Appears in: Great Australian Writers : Miles Franklin, Henry Handel Richardson, Mrs Aeneas Gunn, Ruth Park 1987; (p. 513-698)

'Amid the brothels, grog shops and run-down boarding houses of inner-city Surry Hills, money is scarce and life is not easy. Crammed together within the thin walls of Twelve-and-a-Half Plymouth Street are the Darcy family: Mumma, loving and softhearted; Hughie, her drunken husband; pipe-smoking Grandma; Roie, suffering torments over her bitter-sweet first love; while her younger sister Dolour learns about life the hard way.' (Book description from publisher's website.)

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