A History of Irish Literature and the Environment

Malcolm Sen

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781108490139
• eBook ISBN: 9781108809511
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

From Gaelic annals and medieval poetry to contemporary Irish literature, A History of Irish Literature and the Environment examines the connections between the Irish environment and Irish literary culture. Themes such as Ireland's island ecology, the ecological history of colonial-era plantation and deforestation, the Great Famine, cultural attitudes towards animals and towards the land, the postcolonial politics of food and energy generation, and the Covid-19 pandemic - this book shows how these factors determine not only a history of the Irish environment but also provide fresh perspectives from which to understand and analyze Irish literature. An international team of contributors provides a comprehensive analysis of Irish literature to show how the literary has always been deeply engaged with environmental questions in Ireland, a crucial new perspective in an age of climate crisis. A History of Irish Literature and the Environment reveals the socio-cultural, racial, and gendered aspects embedded in questions of the Irish environment.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Introduction Culture, Climate, Capital, and Contagion
• Chapter 1 Landscape and Literature in Medieval Ireland
• Chapter 2 The Irish Annals and Climate, Fifth–Seventeenth Centuries CE
• Chapter 3 The Environmental Vocabulary of Irish Folklore
• Chapter 4 Narratives of Arboreal Landscapes
• Chapter 5 Famine and Ecology, 1750–1900
• Chapter 6 Political Ecology in Nationalist Literature, 1880–1922
• Chapter 7 Solastalgic Modernism and the West in Irish Literature, 1900–1950
• Chapter 8 The Ecology of the Irish Big House, 1900–1950
• Chapter 9 Refuge and Domestic Space in Northern Irish Poetry, ca. 1940–Present
• Chapter 10 Irish Travellers, the Environment, and Literature
• Chapter 11 The Oceanic Imaginaries of Modern Irish Writing
• Chapter 12 Landscape in Irish-Language Literature: Poetry and Prose, 1900–2000
• Chapter 13 Poetry and Place
• Chapter 14 Animals and Climate Crisis in Irish Poetry
• Chapter 15 Animals and Animality in Irish Fiction
• Chapter 16 The Political Ecology of Food and Hunger, 1950–Present
• Chapter 17 Built Environments and Lived Ecologies in Contemporary Irish Poetry, 1998–Present
• Chapter 18 Transnationalism and Environment in Contemporary Irish Literature
• Chapter 19 Energy Futures in Contemporary Irish Fiction
• Bibliography
• Index