After Yeats and Joyce

Irish literature after Yeats and Joyce, from the 1920s onwards, includes texts which have been the subject of much contention. For a start, how should Irish literature be defined: as works which have been written in Irish or as works written in English by the Irish? It is a period in which ideas of Ireland - of people, community, and nation - have been both created and reflected, and in which conceptions of a distinct Irish identity have been articulated, defended, and challenged; a period which has its origins in a time of intense political turmoil.

The title After Yeats and Joyce suggests the immense influence of these two writers on the styles, stances, and preoccupations of twentieth-century Irish literature. Neil Corcoran focuses his chapters on various themes such as `the Big House', the rural and the provincial, with reference to authors from Kinsella and Beckett to William Trevor, Seamus Heaney, and Mary Lavin, providing a lucid and far-reaching introduction to modern Irish writing.