This monograph is a serious sustained study of one of Ireland’s most important emerging literary practitioners : Colm Toibin. Professor Turner focuses on the origins of Toibin’s career, his stylistic and thematic shift that became apparent in THE STORY OF NIGHT(1996). Another aspect of this critical evaluation is an examination of Toibin’s career as a journalist and non fiction writer.

Exile is ubiquitous in 20th century literature whether temporary expatriation or permanent flight. This quartet of self-exiled German - Australian poets/writers provides an unusual exile of second remove and an extraordinary study in language praxis. These gifted poets and critics fled to Australia because exile meant life and Nazi Europe meant death. They remained despite the lazy suspicion of many native Australians that these scholars were “worse than the pommies” (a terrible thing to be called in Oz) and were “prancing poufter poetasters”.

This discussion of Graham Greene’s faith uses Monsignor Quixote, one of Greene’s later novels, as a departure point to discuss the author’s faith in both secular and divine terms. The scholars involved in this project wanted to explore innocence and experience, peace and war, love and hate in Greene’s richly human literary tapestry. Greene’s Christianity (or lack of it) is explored, as are his major novels and their often bleak and tatty settings.

Four months in America, six months in Ireland, two months, perhaps, on tour around the world: such are the dislocations of contemporary Irish poets. This monograph explores how images of America---its culture, myths, dialects and history—translate into and transform the work of key contemporary Irish poets and their sense of identity. Economic considerations aside, this continuous peregrination often decades long has reshaped the very core of Irish poet expression.

This scholarly monograph investigates and discusses the concepts of character and consciousness through an interdisciplinary reading relying primarily on philosophical concepts and discourse providing a genealogy of the notion of character from Victorian novelists to the notion of consciousness in modern writers.

William Carelton is a survivor. He lives through the pages of his poetry, short stories and novels and he reveled in his sobiquet “Father of Modern Irish Literature”. A careful reading and analysis of his numerous works prove, according to Professor Sullivan, that Carleton actually was worthy of the title ascribed. Carelton wished to record the real Ireland of the agricultural drudges and the rural magnates, the native speakers and the British overseers Sullivan’s work based on her own original research and that of Andre Boue is the first major study of Carelton since 1896.

This new interdisciplinary treatise on the unusual features of literary and cultural items connected with the ancient idea of “translation” including the motif of ascension as a phenomenon complete with its own premises, literary and narratological conceits, but one that has been understudied as an influence on Western culture, religion and its literary production. Professor Sorensen has completed a wide-ranging study and made some surprising conclusions as to the full weight and impact of this religious motif in medieval, Renaissance, Classical and Modern literature and art.

C.C.O’Brien’s extremely provocative and prolific literary criticism has been edited into a well organized study emphasizing the various writers and genres that have fascinated this great Irish statesman and writer. With notes and extensive introduction by Professor Skelly. This work is very useful(and revealing) of the currents in midcentury Irish and British writing and is particularly revealing discussing the origins of the new Irish literary renaissance in poetry and theatre that has emerged in the last two decades.

This research work is an important one in theatre history as no published survey of directorial history exists and, while some reference works discuss directors, none concentrates on American directors nor takes a systematic approach to the subject. This monograph does exactly that. IDEAS OF THEATRE will be of great use to students and scholars of American theatre history as well as the history and development of our national stage.

Chapters include:

1. The Rise of the Director in the American Theatre
2. Ben Teal and the Authoritarian Perspective of Directing

Nicholas Rowe flourished during the first quarter of the 18thc: he was poet laureate to George I, the author of eight plays(three of which were great successes) and he was the esteemed translator of Lucan’s PHARSALIA as well as the first modern editor of Shakespeare’s plays. But most of all he was known as a playwright.