Using technical discussion, definition and example, Dr Ellis discusses the art and craft of literary criticism and uses a variety of essay forms to discuss the critical impulse. Critical essays on 17th and 18th century literature and poetry are used to illustrate the notions of criticism and its overall purpose. Excellent study of the origins, purpose and style inherent in literary criticism.

“ Recommended for research libraries…”
Professor M. Hawkins, UL, Alberta

Most full length critical and biographical studies of Flann O’Brien(the nom de plume of Brian O’Nolan an otherwise inoffensive Irish public servant) tend to push aside the leviathan of “Cruiskeen Lawn”a commodious, encyclopedic work of some two million words and focus instead on his novels in English. Dr. Donohue in this important new study considers all of O’Nolan’s work including college writings, letters to the editor(raised to a form of national genius by F O’B.) and works in Irish.

New approaches to the Augustan concept of madness and Swift’s own as well as material on Gulliver’s Travels and other key Swiftian works. Madness and memory in Swift explored in hitherto unpublished material by the author.

“…highly recommended. First rate discussion of crucial Swift themes.”
Professor Robert Mahony, CUA

Few monographs have studied the methodology and rationale of social science observation and field work from the point of view of the observed, the other. Professor Dabulskis-Hunter examines the power relationships and informational deformations that occur during fieldwork and research expeditions in Native America (both Canada and the USA). The negative effects of such knowledge production and the moral quandary of the observed and the exotic are skillfully described.

This volume of the Irish Critical Receptions Series traces the development of the literary reputation of Sydney Owenson (Lady Morgan) and the contemporary reception history of her writings. One of the most widely reviewed and commercially successful authors of her time, until recently Owenson's literary reputation was largely eclipsed by her contemporaries Maria Edgeworth and Walter Scott. It has only been in the later decades of the twentieth century that scholars have begun to re-examine Owenson as a pivotal figure in post-Union Irish literature and culture.

This scholarly study contains critical new research as well as over 100 reprints of documents, broadsides, ballads that comprise the heart of the pamphlet controversy aroused by Wood’s halfpenny scheme; the scheme which prompted Swift’s Drapier's Letters. Many of these documents are of extreme rarity and are unrecorded by even the finest bibliographical researchers such as Wagner, Davis etc. This is a major contribution to the study of Swift and Irish politics and life in the early 18th century.

An Irish actor’s daughter, Sydney Owenson by dint of great charm and intelligence (as well as literary talent) not only became the wife of Sir Charles Morgan but a popular novelist and social critic in Regency and Early Victorian England. With her friends Byron and Shelley she shared a great love and interest in Italy. Her guide to Italy (ITALY, 1822) was a landmark of political empathy and understanding for a post Napoleonic Italy in the throes of repression.

James Joyce's Giacomo Joyce has generated considerable interest since its posthumous publication in 1968 and this new, ground-breaking work addresses that interest. Giacomo Joyce has provoked widely differing opinions amongst Joyce scholars. But while critical attention has increased, little if anything has been done to draw together the various commentaries, document and exegeses related to this work in anything like a coherent manner.

This research monograph breaks new ground in discussing (in English) the impact
of Washington Irving’s presence in Spain and the effect of his writings on Spanish
topics by Spain’s critics and general readership. Spanish critics, scholars and
translators were and are active in assessing Irving’s literary style, scholarly grasp and
cultural influence. This work seeks to examine Irving’s influence and his “discovery”
of Islamic Al-Andalus (Irving was the first American to seriously study Mahomet

“It has been said that idleness is the parent of mischief, which is very true; but
mischief itself is merely an attempt to escape from the dreary vacuum of idleness.”
George Borrow

First, the subtitle of this completely revised and newly augmented study of George
Borrow, “Misfit” implies not subscribing or submitting to normal, mainstream
middle-class values and habits. Borrow preferred the company of gypsies,
vagabonds, foreigners, horse-dealers and outsiders to the conformist, respectable
English person, whom he thought was sometimes incapable of understanding the