Name: The Playful Air of Light(ness) in Irish Literature and Culture
SKU: 1-4438-2893-9
Availability: InStock

The Playful Air of Light(ness) in Irish Literature and Culture

Edited By: Marta Goszczyńska, Katarzyna Poloczek

£39.99

Moving beyond traditional themes of struggle and oppression, this book centres on playfulness, light and air in Irish literature and culture. Essays offer fresh readings of seminal authors like Yeats and Heaney, alongside lesser-known figures.

While discussions in the field of Irish Studies traditionally gravitate towards themes of struggle, oppression and death, the present book originates from a contradictory impulse.…

While discussions in the field of Irish Studies traditionally gravitate towards themes of struggle, oppression and death, the present book originates from a contradictory impulse. Without losing sight of Ireland’s troubled history and the complexities that shape its present, it centres on instances of playfulness, light(ness) and air in Irish literature and culture. Refracted through the prism of contemporary philosophy (notably of Italo Calvino, Luce Irigaray and María Lugones), these categories serve as the basis for thirteen essays by academics from Poland, the UK, Germany and Spain. Some of these offer fresh readings of such seminal authors as W. B. Yeats, Louis MacNeice, Seamus Heaney and John Banville; others look at lesser-known figures, such as Eimar O’Duffy and Forrest Reid, who, before now, have received little scholarly attention.

Marta Goszczyńska is Assistant Professor (adiunkt) at the University of Łódź, Poland. She has published, both nationally and internationally, on such diverse authors as Graham Swift, Valerie Martin, Jane Urquhart and William Trevor. Her research interests include neo-Victorianism, postmodernism and metafiction. She is co-editor (with Katarzyna Poloczek) of Changing Ireland: Transitions and Transformations in Irish Literature and Culture (University of Łódź Press, 2010).

Katarzyna Poloczek works as Assistant Professor (adiunkt) at the University of Łódź, Poland. She has published articles in the field of Irish Studies, focusing mostly on contemporary Irish women poets and the aspect of gender in Irish literature and culture. Currently, she is working on her postdoctoral book in which she analyses the works of the latest generation of Irish women poets.

Teresa Bruś, Tomasz Dobrogoszcz, Dagmara Krzyżaniak, Michał Lachman, David Malcolm, Richard Mills, Michaela Schrage-Früh, Renata Senktas, Katarzyna Szmigiero, Juan Ráez Padilla, Katarzyna Poloczek