The Irish
(ENIR 249/HSTR 250)
Instructor: David Emmons
TR 3:40-5:00 (GBB 201)
Irish Gaelic Literature
(ENIR 345)
Instructor: Traolach O'Riordáin
TR 9:40-11:00 (LA 338)
Irish Drama
(ENIR 395/LIT 391/DRAM 395)
Instructor: Bernadette Sweeney
T 4:10-5:00 (UH 210), R 4:10-6:00 (UH 210)
This course represents an introduction to modern Irish in both its spoken and written forms: basic principles of grammar and sentence structure are covered. Emphasis is placed on the application of these principles in every-day situations. Students will learn how to conduct simple conversations about the activities and events of everyday life: talking about oneself and asking questions of others; conversing about family and home; describing the weather and daily activities.
This course represents an introduction to modern Irish in both its spoken and written forms: basic principles of grammar and sentence structure are covered. Emphasis is placed on the application of these principles in every-day situations. Students will learn how to conduct simple conversations about the activities and events of everyday life: talking about oneself and asking questions of others; conversing about family and home; describing the weather and daily activities.
Contemporary Irish & N. Irish Literature
(ENIR 360)
Instructor: Eric Reimer
R 6:10-9:00 p.m., Rankin 205
In this course, we will study an exciting and provocative selection of fiction, poetry, drama, film, and music of Irish and Northern Irish artists of the past four decades. The primary goal of the course will be to understand how contemporary artists are responding to the burdens of history, identity, and political conflict, as well as articulating the challenges and possibilities created by the profound changes (social, economic, cultural, political, etc.) attending a new world order. Regarding Northern Ireland, after surveying some of the literary responses to the political conflict euphemistically known as the “Troubles,” we’ll study the inspiring (though still fragile) peace process in Northern Ireland. Ultimately, students will be expected to leave with a basic familiarity with Irish history in the twentieth century and with a more informed understanding of the crisis and subsequent peace in Northern Ireland. Our featured writers will include William Trevor, Colm Toibin, Bernard MacLaverty, Michael Longley, Eavan Boland, Medbh McGuckian, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Robert McLiam Wilson, Seamus Heaney, Ciaran Carson, John Montague, Brian Friel Paul Muldoon, and others.
Irish has the oldest vernacular literature of Europe; our earliest monuments go back to the sixth century.’ This observation by Professor Calvert Watkins of Harvard University highlights the unique and ancient literary tradition of the Irish. In the pre-Norman period, this literary tradition was cultivated by the scholarly monks of the monasteries, at that time the intellectual centres of Ireland and, for a period, of Europe. These learned monks were themselves members of Ireland’s hereditary families of learning. In their embrace of Christianity there occurred a happy consummation of old and new, as the indigenous literature of Ireland was subsumed into the new dispensation and shaped by it. In a similar fashion, Ireland’s Christian literature would draw extensively from native materials to present the lives and exploits of the saints in a way reminiscent of the heroes of the epic tales. Ireland’s scholarly monks would also bring a new vitality to Christian culture so that Irish Latin learning was remarkably superior to anything that could be found in Saxon England, Lombard Italy or Merovingian France. This course focuses on writing in the Irish language and the convergence of native and foreign in the treatment of the epic literature of Ireland; the introduction of new themes and motifs which occurred with the coming of the new religion; the emergence of the personal voice and the admission of personal poetry to the Irish literary canon; the composition of devotional literature, the use of native material in constructing the lives of the saints; and the manner in which these pseudo-biographies were used for purposes other than religious. We will also treat of Irish writing in Latin, the flowering of creativity in that language once it encountered Irish men of letters, and the remarkable contribution that Irish monks made to the intellectual life of Europe, a contribution which would earn Ireland the name ‘The Island of Saints and Scholars.’