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Texts and Contexts:
Modern Irish Literature
Professor Keri Walsh
Fordham University, Department of English
ENGL 2000: T/F 1:00-2:15 PM (R31), 2:30-3:45 PM (R19)
Faculty Memorial Hall 220
E-mail: [email protected]
Office Hours: Thursday 3:30 PM – 7:30 PM (520 W Dealy Hall)
Course Description. This introduction to Modern Irish Literature is divided into four parts. In
our first unit, we will familiarize ourselves with the cultural, political, and historical contexts of
the course by focusing on works set in the West of Ireland. Next, we will embark on a study of
Irish music, poetry and mythology with the works of James Joyce, Eavan Boland, and others.
This unit with conclude with an Irish Women Writers Symposium featuring guest speakers. In
Unit Three, “The Irish Artist in Exile,” we will examine the career of Oscar Wilde and the
relationship between his plays, his other writings, his trial and imprisonment, and his afterlife as
an icon. Finally, we will turn our attention to the Gothic genre with a unit dedicated to two Irish
novels: Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Recurring themes of
the course include colonization, emigration, exile, language, gender and sexuality, and the
relationship between history and myth. Course requirements include two essays, one Irish
Women Writers Symposium assignment, a midterm exam, and a final exam.
Course website: http://modernirishdrama.weebly.com/
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Textbooks:
J.M. Synge, The Playboy of the Western World and Riders to the Sea, Dover Thrift Editions,
 ISBN-10: 0486275620  ISBN-13: 978-0486275628
James Joyce, Dubliners (Oxford World's Classics) Paperback, Jeri Johnson (Editor)  ISBN-10:
0199536430  ISBN-13: 978-0199536436  Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 0.9 x 5.1 inches
Eavan Boland, Object Lessons: The Life of the Woman and the Poet in Our Time, Publisher: W.
W. Norton & Company; ISBN-10: 9780393314373, ISBN-13: 978-0393314373
Edna O’Brien, Saints and Sinners: Stories, Back Bay Books;  ISBN-10: 0316122726  ISBN13: 978-0316122726
Oscar Wilde, De Profundis and Other Prison Writings (Penguin Classics) Paperback – April 30,
2013  ISBN-10: 0140439900  ISBN-13: 978-0140439908
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays: Lady Windermere's Fan;
Salome; A Woman of No Importance; An Ideal Husband; The Importance of Being Earnest
(Oxford World's Classics), Peter Raby (Editor),  ISBN-10: 9780199535972  ISBN-13: 9780199535972
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla: A Critical Edition, Kathleen Costello-Sullivan, editor.
Syracuse University Press; Critical edition (May 15, 2013)  ISBN-10: 0815633114  ISBN-13:
978-0815633112
Bram Stoker, Dracula, Penguin Classics ISBN: 9780141439846
*All other readings will be circulated electronically as PDF files.
Course Assignments and Grade Breakdown
Midterm Exam 10%
(based on material in Senia Pašeta’s Modern Ireland) Tuesday, February 3
Essay #1: 15%
Due Thursday, March 12 (by midnight, submitted by e-mail to [email protected]).
Irish Women Writers Symposium Assignment: 10%
Due Tuesday, March 24 (by midnight, submitted to [email protected])
Essay #2: 25%
Due Monday, May 4 (by midnight, submitted by e-mail to [email protected])
Final Exam: 20% (details TBA)
Course website: http://modernirishdrama.weebly.com/
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Participation: 10%
This includes being on time to class and having the appropriate reading material with you. It also
includes your participation in class discussions, writing prompts, and other exercises.
Attendance: 10%
O unexcused absences: A
1 unexcused absence: A2 unexcused absences: B+
3 unexcused absences: B
4 unexcused absences: B5 unexcused absences: C+ (and so on…)
Unit One:
Introduction to Irish History and the West of Ireland
While I had been looking in the columns of Nationalist newspapers for some word of
poetic promise, they had been singing songs of love and sorrow in the language that has
been pushed nearer and nearer to the western seaboard—the edge of the world.
-Augusta Gregory, “West Irish Ballads”
Class 1. Tuesday January 13: Senia Pašeta, Modern Ireland: An Introduction
Class 2. Friday January 16: Film Screening, David Lean, Ryan’s Daughter (1970)
You may attend either one of the following screenings:
Screening #1: 12:45 PM to 3:45 PM, Faculty Memorial Hall 220 (our usual classroom)
Screening #2: 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM, Flom Auditorium, Walsh Library
Course website: http://modernirishdrama.weebly.com/
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Class 3. Tuesday January 20: Ryan’s Daughter, lecture and discussion
Class 4. Friday January 23: Eileen O’Connell, The Lament for Art O’Leary (PDF)
Class 5. Tuesday January 27: J.M. Synge, Riders to the Sea, The Aran Islands (excerpt) (PDF), Augusta
Gregory, “West Ireland Ballads,” (PDF), Robert Flaherty, Man of Aran (film available on website, please
watch before class)
Class 6. Friday January 30: W.B. Yeats, Kathleen ni Houlihan (PDF)
Unit Two:
Music, Poetry, and Mythology
O consolations of the craft. / How we put / the old poultices on the old sores, / the same mirrors
to the old magic. Look.
Eavan Boland, “Listen. This is the Noise of Myth.”
Class 7. Tuesday February 3: Modern Irish History Exam.
Beginning of Song Study (song lyrics to be distributed in class)
Class 8. Friday February 6: Song Study with musical accompaniment (location TBA)
Class 9. Tuesday February 10: James Joyce, “The Dead”
Class 10. Friday February 13: James Joyce, “The Dead”
Tuesday February 17—NO CLASS b/c classes follow a Monday schedule
Class 11. Friday February 20: W.B. Yeats, “To Ireland in the Coming Times,” “Leda and the Swan,” “No
Second Troy” and other selected poems (PDF)
Class 12. Tuesday February 24: Eavan Boland, Selected Poems (PDF), Object Lessons
Class 13. Friday February 27: Belinda McKeon, reading TBA (PDF)
Class 14. Tuesday March 3: Geraldine Hughes, Belfast Blues (I will give you a hard copy of the play)
Course website: http://modernirishdrama.weebly.com/
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Class 15. Friday March 6: Edna O’Brien, Saints and Sinners (“Shovel Kings, “Black Flower,”
“Plunder”)
Class 16: Tuesday March 10: IRISH WOMEN WRITERS SYMPOSIUM
O’HARE SPECIAL COLLECTIONS,
WALSH LIBRARY, 1-4 PM
Essay #1 due Thursday March 12 (by e-mail to [email protected])
Class 17: Friday March 13: Edna O’Brien, Saints and Sinners (“Sinners,” “Madame Cassandra,”
“Manhattan Medley,” “My Two Mothers,” “Old Wounds”)
SPRING BREAK
Unit Three:
The Irish Artist in Exile
I never travel without my diary. One should always have
something sensational to read in the train.
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Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
Class 18. Tuesday March 24: Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
IRISH WOMEN WRITERS SYMPOSIUM ASSIGNMENT DUE IN CLASS
Class 19. Friday March 27: Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
Class 20. Tuesday March 31: Oscar Wilde, De Profundis
Friday, April 3: NO CLASS—Easter Recess
Course website: http://modernirishdrama.weebly.com/
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Class 21. Tuesday April 7: Writing Workshop for Final Essay
Unit Four:
Irish Gothic
“Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!”
Bram Stoker, Dracula
Class 22. Friday April 10: Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla
Class 23. Tuesday April 14: Bram Stoker, Dracula (pp. 1-98, ending with “She ought not to have much
inclination for sleep-walking then)
Class 24. Friday April 17: Bram Stoker, Dracula (pp. 99-206, ending with ‘They were made by Miss
Lucy!”)
Class 25. Tuesday April 21: Bram Stoker, Dracula (pp. 207-307), ending with “Of this I am sure: the sun
rises today on no more miserable house in all the great round of its daily course.”
Class 26. Friday April 24: Bram Stoker, Dracula (pp. 308-402)
Class 27. Tuesday April 28 LAST CLASS FINAL EXAM REVIEW
Essay #2: Due Monday, May 4 (submitted by e-mail, by midnight, to
[email protected])
Final Exam (details TBA)
Course website: http://modernirishdrama.weebly.com/