123046 PS Proseminar Literature (2012W)

For many readers and critics (Vivian Mercier, Donald E. Morse), Irish literature and the Fantastic are synonymous. From ancient and medieval Irish myths to contemporary fiction, poetry, and drama, Irish writers have explored the Fantastic’s tropes of cognitive estrangement and imagined dystopias/utopias as a means of both creating a satiric and ludic national artistic voice, and of confronting Ireland’s strange history and cultural circumstances.

Beyond introducing the student to the general predominance of dream visions, ghosts, and other uncanny forces in Irish literature, we will trace the progression of such ‘hesitations about reality’ from the means of satire to the content of Gothicism, and finally to the indeterminacy of Modernist and Post-Modernist forms.

In the process, we will also explore how to read these tropes in and against their cultural contexts by asking whether the Fantastic genre is a conservative one — fighting the Enlightenment with reference to ancient beliefs and insights — or a radical and experimental means of writing in modern Ireland, whether in reaction to colonial oppression, the drab realities of de Valera’s post-independence Free State, or the crises of the present moment.

The course will also include a guest lecture from contemporary Irish author Julian Gough ("Jude in London", "The Orphan and the Mob", "The Great Goat Bubble")