Strange Country: Modernity and Nationhood in Irish Writing since 1790 (Clarendon Lectures in English Literature) [Paperback]

Seamus Deane (Author)

Book Description

Series: Clarendon Lectures in English Literature | Publication Date: May 20, 1999

This book identifies the origin, the development and, ultimately, the success of the Irish literary tradition in English as one of the first literatures that is both national and colonial. It demonstrates the remarkable relationships between works as diverse as Joyce's Dubliners and Bram Stoker's Dracula, and the worlds of the French Revolution and the Irish famine. Deane also shows how almost all the activities of Irish print culture--novels, songs, typefaces, historical analyses, poems--struggle within the limits imposed by its inheritance.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Strange Country may be Deane's finest book yet; for anyone interested in Irish literary and cultural studies, it is indispensable."--MLN

About the Author

Seamus Deane is Keough Professor of Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana.

Product Details

• Paperback: 280 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (May 20, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0198184905
• ISBN-13: 978-0198184904
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,035,269 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Articulate, knotty, elliptical., October 29, 1997

By 

P. N. Meihuizen (Zululand, South Africa) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Strange Country: Modernity and Nationhood in Irish Writing since 1790 (Clarendon Lectures in English Literature, 1995) (Hardcover)

A densely written work, brimming with an almost Jesuit obsession with intellectual precision. It certainly illuminates aspects of the literature it refers to, but it tends to favour its own theoretical matrix (as does so much contemporary theory). Worth the effort to read, but one can't help feeling that Heaney says as much in more accessible terms.