Author Description

"This book offers a critical reassessment of the uses of history in contemporary Irish literature and culture. It argues that in much recent Irish writing, history is approached not as the proverbial 'nightmare' from which Joyce's Stephen Dedalus tried to awake, but as a rich, imaginative resource. Drawing on recent debates in Irish literary and cultural criticism, on the study of memory, as well as on radical models of time and history, On the Uses of History in Recent Irish Writing explores the varied, creative, and often critically challenging forms of rewriting Ireland's troubled past in contemporary prose, drama and poetry." "Written with clarity and style, this contribution to Irish Studies makes ideal reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students following courses in contemporary Irish writing, and will appeal to anybody with an interest in Irish literature, in history and its textual representation, and in the formation of cultural memory."--book jacket.