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International in scope and based on primary research, this book gathers twelve new essays by critics including both well-established and newer voices. It aims to stimulate further enquiry, research and critical reflection, in sceptical, analytic or celebratory modes, on the riches of Irish literary texts and traditions. The collection discusses texts from the early 18th century to the present. It also addresses those meta-narratives by which we understand and mediate these riches for contemporary and future use. The cumulative effect is to call into question, often in new contexts, master narratives of Irish studies. Some essays focus on the aesthetic – a vital category of discussion about a national literature – and its interweaving with ideological purposes. Others concentrate on different phases of the retrieval of women's texts previously occluded by gender bias in canon formation. A central theme is the need to renegotiate the relations of feminism with nationalism and to transact the potential contest of these two important narratives, each possessing powerful emancipatory force. Irish Literature: Feminist Perspectives contributes incisively to contemporary debates about Irish culture, gender and ideology.

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The Informer, Tom Murphy’s stage adaptation of Liam O’Flaherty’s novel, was produced in the 1981 Dublin Theatre Festival, directed by the playwright himself, with Liam Neeson in the leading role. The central subject of the play is the quest a character at the point of emotional and moral breakdown for some source of meaning or identity. In the case of Gypo Nolan, the informer of the title, this involves a nightmarish progress through a Dublin underworld in which he changes from a Judas figure to a scapegoat surrogate for Jesus, taking upon himself the sins of the world. A cinematic style, with flash-back and intercut scenes, is used rather than a conventional theatrical structure to catch the fevered and phantasmagoric progression of Gypo’s mind. The language, characteristically for Murphy, mixes graphically colloquial Dublin slang with the haunted inarticulateness of the central character groping for the meaning of his own actions. The dynamic rhythm of the action builds towards an inevitable but theatrically satisfying tragic catastrophe.

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As well as providing a very readable and comprehensive study of the life and music of John Buckley,Constellations also offers an up-to-date and informative catalogue of compositions, a complete discography, translations of set texts and the full libretto of his chamber opera, making this book an essential guide for both students and professional scholars alike.

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Poems 2000-2005 is a transitional collection written while the author – also known to be W. J. Me Cormack, literary historian – was in the process of moving back from London to settle in rural Ireland. It is also a vigorous contribution to the age-old dialogue between Sacred and Profane themes, questioning beliefs and pleasures, guilts and landscapes, poetic methods and prosaic realities. Included are some of the most disturbing and accomplished meditations on communal violence in Ulster, the province where Hugh Maxton now lives. He is currently completing a new volume of poems and working – at age of 57 – on a first novel.

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Since the late 1970s there has been a marked internationalization of Irish drama, with individual plays, playwrights, and theatrical companies establishing newly global reputations. This book reflects upon these developments, drawing together leading scholars and playwrights to consider the consequences that arise when Irish theatre travels abroad. Essays discuss some of Ireland’s major theatre companies – Druid, the Abbey Theatre, Rough Magic, Blue Raincoat, Field Day and others – while also exploring the presence of Irish drama in the UK, the USA, Germany, and throughout Ireland. The volume also presents the views of key playwrights, featuring essays by Elizabeth Kuti and Ursula Rani Sarma, and including a new interview with Enda Walsh.

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For over fifty years, the Dublin Theatre Festival has been one of Ireland’s most important cultural events, bringing countless events, bringing countless new Irish plays to the world stage, while introducing Irish audiences to the most important international theatre companies and artists. With contributions from leading scholars and practitioners, Interactions explores and celebrates the Festival’s achievements since 1957 featuring essays on major Irish writers, directors and theatre companies, as well as the impact of visiting directors and companies from abroad. This book includes specially commissioned memoirs from past organizers and observers of the Festival, offering a unique perspective on the controversies and successes that have marked the event’s history. An especially valuable feature of the volume, also, is a complete listing the shows that have appeared at the Festival from 1957 to 2008. Contributors: Lewis Clohessy, Tanya Dean, Ros Dixon, Christopher Fitz-Simon, Lisa Fitzpatrick, David Grant, John P. Harrington, Sara Keating, Thomas Kilroy, Peter Kuch, Cathy Leeney, Fergus Linehan, Tony Ó Dálaigh, Fintan O‘Toole, Lionel Pilkington, Emilie Pine, Alexandra Poulain, Shaun Richards, Carmen Szabó. With a preface by Loughlin Deegan.

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Her book, written in the mid-20th century, is now published in full for the first time. It draws on her long experience as performer, broadcaster what she learnt from her teachers about Liszt’s interpretation of the piano music of his contemporaries, in particular of his friend Chopin, how he wanted his own piano works performed, and what special techniques facilitated the interpretations he favoured, as well as his own virtuoso performance. This is presented in discussions of many well-known works of the classical piano repertoire, and richly illustrated with extracts from the compositions in question. These musical examples have been played and video-recorded for the DVD accompanying the book. This is a document of considerable historical importance, offering an authoritative account of Liszt's teaching methods as imparted by two of his former students to whom he was particularly close. It contains much valuable information of a kind that is unavailable elsewhere: none of the reminiscences of Liszt published by his students discuss technical matters or interpretation in comparable detail. It records a direct and authentic oral tradition of continental European pianism going back to the nineteenth century.

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Born of a virgin, crucified under Pontius Pilate, died and was buried, and rose again on the third day – this, the Church’s conception of Jesus, is based on mystical and mythological thinking. But Jesus is not a citizen of another world, he is not an alien who dwelt amongst us for a short time. He is no omniscient and almighty miracle worker. And he is not an only-begotten Son of God. The author looks at the gospels from a modern angle. Was Jesus a person like us? He investigates these issues conscientiously and opens up a new way in which the modern Christian, despite everything, can confidently be a believer. <BR>Roger Lenaers, born in Ostend in 1925, is a Flemish theologian and classical scholar and a member of the Jesuit Order. For almost half a century he has been concerned with developments within the Christian faith.<BR>

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The lively, informative and incisive collection of essays sheds fascinating new light on the literary interrelations between Ireland, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Czech Republic. It charts a hitherto under-explored history of the reception of modern Irish culture in Central and Eastern Europe and also investigates how key authors have been translated, performed, and adapted. The work of Jonathan Swift, John Millington Synge, Flann O'Brien, Samuel Beckett, Brian Friel, Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon and Martin McDonagh, it is indicated, has particularly inspired writers, directors, and translators. The searching analyses presented here illuminatingly reflect on the far-reaching political and social import of multicultural exchange. It is shown to be a process that is at best mutually defining and that raises questions about received forms of identity, the semiotics of genre and the possibilities and limits of linguistic translation. In addition, the histories compiled here of critical commentary on Irish literature in Hungary or of the staging of contemporary Irish plays in Hungary and in the Czech Republic, for example, uncover the haphazardness of intercultural exchange and the extent to which it is vulnerable to political ideology, social fashion, and the vagaries of state funding. The revealing explorations undertaken in this volume of a wide array of Irish dramatic and literary texts, ranging from Gulliver's Travels to Translations and The Pillowman, tease out the subtly altered nuances that they acquire in a Central European context. By the same token, it is demonstrated that Ireland has been changed by the recent migration of workers from Eastern Europe and that consequently projections of the figure of the emigrant or asylum seeker in current drama warrant scrutiny. This original and combative collection demonstrates, not only that literary exchange between Hungary, Poland, Romania, the Czech Republic, and Ireland has been prolonged, multifaceted and, above all, enriching, but also that it exposes blind-spots, and forces confrontation with issues of racism, failure of empathy and cultural misprision.

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