Same as English 761.001.
From Sally Rooney to Anna Burns to Tana French, Irish women writers populate bestseller lists today. Yet the history of Irish women’s writing from the early nineteenth century to the present is more often one of occlusion. The 2016 #waking the feminists campaign against the absence of women playwrights at the Abbey Theatre in its 1916 Rising centenary programming is just one recent example. This class historicizes and responds to these absences by foregrounding a tradition of women’s writing, one responsive to general trends in Irish literature, culture, history, and social and political movements. We focus on writing from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries after beginning with Maria Edgeworth’s novel Castle Rackrent (1800). We will consider poetry, plays, short fiction, non-fiction, novels, film and television: from Eavan Boland to Derry Girls, via Elizabeth Bowen, Edna O’Brien, and Maeve Brennan. To complicate and challenge our own views of these texts, we will read academic scholarship, including postcolonial theory, Irish feminist theory, and other relevant literary and cultural criticism.
Irish women writers have historically been marginalized and excluded from the literary canon. This class seeks to historicize and respond to these concerns by foregrounding Irish women writers and arguing for a “tradition” of women’s writing. We focus primarily on work from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, after beginning with Maria Edgeworth’s groundbreaking novel Castle Rackrent (1800). We will read novels, drama, poetry, and short stories and ask questions about aesthetics, historical context, gender, sexuality, race, class, and religion. To complicate and challenge our own views of these texts, we will also supplement our readings with academic scholarship, including postcolonial theory, Irish feminist theory, and other relevant literary and cultural criticism. This course is designed to help you develop your critical skills as writers and thinkers, as well as your ability to engage with scholarship in literary theory, criticism, and interpretation.