The Oxford Companion to Irish Literature
 | This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these messages)
|
 Cover of the first edition | |
| Editor | Robert Welch |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | Irish literature |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Publication date | 1996 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| Pages | 648 |
| ISBN | 978-0198661580 |
The Oxford Companion to Irish Literature is a 1996 book edited by Robert Welch.
In over 2,000 entries, the Companion to Irish Literature surveys the Irish literary landscape across sixteen centuries, describing its features and landmarks.[citation needed] Entries range from ogham writing, developed in the 4th century, to the fiction, poetry, and drama of the 1990s.[citation needed] There are accounts of authors as early as Adomnán, 7th-century Abbot of Iona, up to contemporary writers such as Roddy Doyle, Brian Friel, Seamus Heaney, and Edna O'Brien.[1] Individual entries are provided for all major works, from Táin Bó Cuailnge - the Ulster saga reflecting the Celtic Iron Age - to Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent, Ó Cadhain's Cré na Cille, and Banville's The Book of Evidence.
The book also illuminates[tone] the historical contexts of these writers, and the events which sometimes directly inspired them - the Irish Famine of 1845-8, which provided a theme for novelists, poets, and memoirists from William Carleton to Patrick Kavanagh and Peadar Ó Laoghaire the founding of the Abbey Theatre and its impact on playwrights such as J. M. Synge and Padraic Colum; the Easter Rising that stirred Yeats to the `terrible beauty' of `Easter 1916'.
It offers information on general topics, ranging from the stage Irishman to Catholicism, Protestantism, the Irish language, and university education in Ireland; and on genres such as annals, bardic poetry, and folksong.[citation needed]
References
- ^ Welch, Robert (1 January 2003). "The Concise Oxford Companion to Irish Literature". Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acref/9780192800800.001.0001. ISBN 9780192800800 – via www.oxfordreference.com.