A history of Irish working-class writing
By: edited by Michael Pierse
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2018
Language: eng
Number of pages: 461
ISBN-13: 9781107149687
Subjects: Working class in literature; English literature; Irish authors; History and criticism
Description: "A History of Irish Working-Class Writing provides a wide-ranging and authoritative chronicle of the writing of Irish working-class experience. Ground-breaking in scholarship and comprehensive in scope, it is a major intervention in Irish Studies scholarship, charting representations of Irish working-class life from eighteenth-century rhymes and songs to the novels, plays and poetry of working-class experience in contemporary Ireland. There are few narrative accounts of Irish radicalism, and even fewer that engage 'history from below'. This book provides original insights in these relatively untilled fields. Exploring workers' experiences in various literary forms, from early to late capitalism, the twenty-two chapters make this book an authoritative and substantial contribution to Irish studies and English literary studies generally"--

"Michael Pierse is Lecturer in Irish literature at Queen's University Belfast. His research mainly explores the writing and cultural production of Irish working-class life. Over recent years this work has expanded into new multidisciplinary themes and international contexts, including the study of festivals, digital methodologies in public humanities and theatre-as-research practices. Michael has contributed to a range of national and international publications, is the author of Writing Ireland's Working Class: Dublin after O'Casey (2011), and has been awarded several Arts and Humanities Research Council awards and the Vice Chancellor's Award at Queen's"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Foreword Declan Kiberd; Introduction Michael Pierse; 1. Writing and theorising the Irish working class David Convery; 2. Representing labour: notes towards a political and cultural economy of Irish working-class experience Christopher J. V. Loughlin; 3. Working-class writing in Ireland before 1800: 'some must be poor; title: we cannot all be great' Andrew Carpenter; 4. 'We wove our ain wab': the Ulster Weaver poets' working lives, myths and afterlives Frank Ferguson; 5. Sub-literatures?: Folk song, memory and Ireland's working poor John Moulden; 6. Writing working-class Irish women Heather Laird; 7. 'Unwriting' the city: narrating class in early twentieth-century Belfast and Dublin (1900-1929) Elizabeth Mannion; 8. Class during the Irish revolution: British soldiers, 1916, and the abject body James Moran; 9. 'An sinne a bhi sa chonra?'; title: Writing death on the margins in twentieth-century Irish working-class writing Michael Pierse; 10. Writing Irish nurses in Britain Tony Muray; 11. The view from below: solidarity and struggle in Irish-American working-class literature Margaret Hallissy and John Lutz; 12. Irish working-class writing in Australasia, 1860-1960: contrasts and comparisons Peter Kuch; 13. Irish working-class poetry 1900-1960 Niall Carson; 14. 'A system that inflicts suffering upon the many' Paul Delaney; 15. Drama, 1900-1950 Paul Murphy; 16. Sean O'Casey and Brendan Behan: aesthetics, democracy, and the voice of labour John Brannigan; 17. Reshaping well-worn genres: historical novels 1960-1998 Mary McGlynn; 18. Locked out: working-class lives in Irish drama 1958-1998 Victor Merriman; 19. Poetry and the working class in Northern Ireland during the troubles Adam Hanna; 20. Class politics and performance in troubles drama: 'history isn't over yet' Mark Phelan; 21. Twentieth-century workers' biography Claire Lynch; 22. Multiple class consciousnesses in writings for theatre during the Celtic Tiger Era Eamonn Jordan; Afterword overdue: the recovery and study of Irish working-class writing, an international perspective H. Gustav Klaus.