Irish Language and Literature (IRLL)

This course provides an enjoyable introduction to Modern Irish. Energetic teachers in small classes teach basic language skills, prepare students to conduct conversations and to read authentic texts. Extensive use is made of role-play and interactive teaching methods. Irish 10101 is a superb opportunity to learn a new language, explore Irish/Celtic culture and investigate the linguistic politics of the only minority language offered at Notre Dame. In addition to satisfying the language requirement of the College, Beginning Irish I satisfies one of the language requirements for the Minor in Irish Studies and the Major /Minor in Irish Language and Literature. This class meets 3 days per week. In lieu of a scheduled 4th class, students work independently on technology-based language/culture projects. No prior knowledge of the Irish Language required.

A second semester of instruction in the Irish Language, this course is a continuation of IRLL 10101 and further develops the students' linguistic ability and knowledge of Irish. Role-play, pair work and group work, written exercise and dialogue are used to expand the students' vocabulary, and cultivate a deeper understanding of the language. Students read basic texts and view a select number of authentic materials including some videos. Students are required to have passed Irish 10101. In addition to satisfying the language requirement of the College, Beginning Irish II satisfies one of the language requirements for the Major/Minor in Irish Language & Literature and the Minor in Irish Studies. This class meets 3 days per week. In lieu of a scheduled 4th class, students work independently on technology-based language/culture projects.

This class introduces students to Irish traditional Sean-nós ("old style") dancing, a vernacular solo form of dancing done to Irish traditional (folk) music. No experience is required or necessary. Please note this does not count as one of the full-credit courses required for the IRLL major, IRLL minor or IRST minor. However, the 1 credit can count toward your overall IRLL major/minor or IRST minor credits.

Irish Social Dance(ceili and set) No experience is required or necessary. Please note this does not count as one of the full-credit courses required for the IRLL major, IRLL minor or IRST minor. However, the 1 credit can count toward your overall IRLL major/minor or IRST minor credits.

This class focuses on the tunes, phrasing, and rhythm used to accompany Irish social dances. Students should have taken "Tin Whistle and Tunes" or already be proficient on their instrument (learn simple tunes quickly by ear, ABC notation, or sheet music). Please note this does not count as one of the full-credit courses required for the IRLL major, IRLL minor or IRST minor. However, the 1 credit can count toward your overall IRLL major/minor or IRST minor credits.

Irish Music: Tin Whistle and Tunes will introduce students to playing the tin whistle (penny whistle), teaching simple, popular tunes, as well as to singing Irish traditional songs. Please note this does not count as one of the full-credit courses required for the IRLL major, IRLL minor or IRST minor. However, the 1 credit can count toward your overall IRLL major/minor or IRST minor credits.

This writing-intensive USEM uses literary and cultural analysis to examine aspects of Irish culture, literature and language. For a full description of this section of the course, please see the enhanced course information.

This course offers an introduction to the modern Irish language. Each class will focus on the acquisition of the following language skills: Aural comprehension, oral comprehension, writing and grammar. A portion of each class will address specific traits of Irish culture in relation to the Irish language. This course places a keen emphasis on developing a proficiency in speaking. Consequently, drills, pair work and group activities will be a central activity. Students, therefore, are expected to participate in discussion groups and engage fully in role-play exercises and in all classroom activities. You are encouraged to contact me with all questions/difficulties. This three-credit course will count towards the Minors in Irish Language and Literature, and Irish Studies.

This course follows on IRLL 10101 and 10102 with attention to more advanced grammatical structures, speaking and reading. You will hone your linguistic skills and also delve into some short twentieth-century texts in Irish. In addition, you will learn something about Irish culture and music. Prerequisites: you must have passed 10101 and 10102 to enroll.

Ireland produced one of the most unique, extensive, and oldest literatures in Europe. In this class we look at a wide range of stories -- saints’ lives, political poetry, myth and legend, heroic epic, lament, and placelore -- from ca. 800-1800 C.E. We learn about the changing religious, political, cultural and intellectual contexts to which these Irish women and men responded with their powerful compositions. We ask: what did Irish writers record about their conversion from paganism to Christianity? How did they use Gaelic poetry to protest invasion and English colonization? How did texts created by and about remarkable women like St. Brigit, the warrior-queen Medb, and the keening poet Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, address issues of gender and power in a heavily patriarchal Ireland? In this class we think about the transformative potential of words, and ask the question: what is literature, and how do we recognize and appreciate it? What defines Irish literature, and what has made it so politically and culturally dynamic? By looking at authors ranging from saints and scholars to dispossessed poets and grieving women, we examine the voices from Ireland’s past that still speak to us today.

This course offers an introduction to modern and contemporary Irish- language literature. We begin tracing the influence of the Revival and cultural nationalism on the development of a modern literature in the Irish language. We read key texts in the light of the national narrative, taking note of cultural change and contested identities while also considering the specificities of a literature that can trace an unbroken line to what is often described as the oldest vernacular literature in Europe. Among the texts discussed will be work by Pearse, Ó Conaire, the Blasket autobiographies, Ó Cadhain, Tiley, Ó Conghaile, Ó Ríordáin, Ní Dhomhnaill, Ní Ghriofa among others. All texts will be read in translation. Relevant documentaries will also be used and shown in class to further illustrate and elucidate the work of particular authors. This course fulfills the survey requirement for the IRll major. Texts studied in translation. No prior knowledge of the Irish language necessary.

This introductory course to the Short Story literary form, as practiced in Ireland, introduces students to themes and motifs as well as the critical debates associated with the genre from the Revival to WWII. We begin with a survey of the literary history and cultural politics of Ireland in the nineteenth century, the Irish Literary revival, and the emergence of the short story in Irish, before considering the relationship between folklore, modernity, and modernism to the origins of the modern short story form as well as the role of cultural nationalism, regional exceptionalism, and the depiction/idealization of women and the paucity of female authors in the genre prior to WWII. Authors studied in this course, include: P.H. Pearse, Pádraic Ó Conaire, Seamus Ó Grianna, Seosamh Mac Grianna, Máirtín Ó Cadhain, Liam Ó Flaithearta/Liam O'Flaherty. Stories are read primarily as literary texts that shed light on evolving cultural, political, and social conditions and provide incisive insights into the Irish literary and cultural tradition. This course is an ideal introduction to literary criticism and cultural studies. No prior knowledge of Irish or Ireland is required. All texts will be available in English translation. Satisfies -- LIT - old Core Literature (LIT) WKAL - new Core Art & Literature

What makes the Irish the Irish? What is Irish culture and identity, and how has it been transformed under globalization and across the global diaspora? This course will introduce students to Ireland and the Irish by analyzing and contextualizing the complex development of Irish culture and traditions including literature, history, the Irish language, film, television, dance, music, religion, art, economics, and politics. We will examine how historical factors have shaped Irish identity and society, the role of the Irish diaspora in the construction of global "Irishness," and what stories the Irish (and others) tell about being Irish. These stories engage both the well-known narrative of Celtic myths, early saints, English oppression, famine, and revolution, to the less well-known but still Irish stories about gay anti-colonial critics, contemporary economies of boom and bust, Irish labor, climate and political activists, South American settlers, world-famous poets and musicians, the Irish relation to whiteness and white supremacy, UN peacekeeping, controversial tax policies, and more—a world away from the stereotype of Ireland as rural, traditional and insular. Given the long history of the Irish leaving Ireland for a better life elsewhere, and the relatively recent history of a newly wealthy Ireland hosting immigrants and refugees from other parts of the globe, the Irish story is indispensable for students interested in exploring issues of immigration, emigration, colonization and diaspora anywhere in the world. We will welcome a rich roster of guest lectures from Notre Dame's renowned Keough-Naughton Institute, as well as other visitors.

An advanced course focusing on reading and translating a variety of texts in the Irish language. We concentrate on further development of reading, interpretive, and technical skills mastered in previous language courses (IRLL 10101, IRLL 10102, IRLL 20103). Texts from various authors and historical periods allow students to taste different writing styles: contemporary fiction, journalism, literary criticism, historical and cultural texts. Emphasis will be on sentence structure, stylistics and syntax. Students are required to have earned a high grade in IRLL 20103 in order to take this class. At the conclusion of this course, students will be able to conduct independent research with Irish texts.

Intensive instruction in Irish conversation is given each morning and afternoon. Lectures on aspects of contemporary Irish Language, literature and culture wi11 be scheduled throughout the course and attendance is recommended. In order to quantify learning and to place a value on it, courses are divided up into credit units. Credits may vary, however they represent a standard number of class contact hours and average workload for a programme. This workload includes lectures, practical work, seminars, private work and examinations. The use of the term credits is a common one among the third level sector and provides a "currency" with which students may transfer from one course to another or gain exemption from elements of a particular programme. The intensive courses in Irish Conversation on offer run concurrently.

This course will discuss the 19th century concept of folklore and its application to Ireland, where it was largely framed by the cultural nationalist Gaelic Revival. Irish folklore has conventionally been understood in terms of three main and related domains: ‘oral narrative', ideologically the most important, ‘folk custom and belief', and ‘folk life', in practice most often the documentation of material folk culture. Each of these will be examined and problematized in turn.

Boston Celtics (baseball), Glasgow Celtic (soccer), Celtic spirituality, Celtic music, Celtic art... The word "Celtic" seems to cover a multitude, yet also has a more specific meaning. It refers to a people of the ancient world known to the Greeks and the Romans and who left their trace in many parts of Europe; it refers to rich medieval cultures in Ireland and Britain; and it refers to a group of living languages and literatures such as Irish and Scottish Gaelic, Welsh and Breton. But "Celtic" also evokes certain qualities and characteristics such as passion, sensitivity, imagination, musicality and bellicosity, which have been attributed to the Irish and the Scottish Highlanders, for example, since the Romantic period. This course gives a concise introduction to the question of who were and who are the Celts.

Language was an important facet of the vibrant society of Early Ireland. The Irish cultivated not just Latin, the learned language of the Christian church in Europe, but also their own vernacular - Early Irish - to a remarkably high degree of literary skill and sophistication. We will look at several aspects of language in society in Ireland up to the high middle ages, the practitioners of writing and the institutions which fostered it. The main focus will be on Irish, which produced the oldest vernacular literature in medieval Western Europe. From the earliest written remains - the Ogham inscriptions - to the introduction of Irish to Britain and the flowering of a remarkable literature in manuscript, culminating in the great compilations of later medieval times, Irish has a rich and varied history. The course will address a range of questions, such as the following. How old is Irish? Who wrote it, and for whom? What exactly is Ogham? What sort of literature was written in Early Irish? What are the earliest sources? Is it related to other languages? What other languages were known in Early Ireland? How have historical events impacted on Irish? We will also look at selected inscriptions and samples of literary prose and verse.

The study of various aspects of the Irish Language Literature.

This class looks at how sex and power operate in Irish literature from the bloodthirsty warrior queens and powerful sovereignty goddesses of medieval saga to the sly civility of the eighteenth century to today's activist punk poets and videographers. We will take particular interest in how women are represented by others and how they choose to answer back, but also look at what that means for ideas of masculinity and relationality. We will consider key genres of Irish verbal art in a wide range of compositions from medieval to contemporary. We will be helped along by relevant literary, anthropological and cultural criticism. Are "women's" voices (whether by known women or not) subversive of our expectations or intent upon maintaining the status quo? How can we acknowledge and deconstruct misogyny not as inevitable but as historically and contextually conditioned and subject to demystifying critique? What vantage can we gain on Irish literary history by asking these historical, theoretical and political questions? How do tradition and the canon look when we view them through a gendered lens? What kind of impersonations might we engage in when we read...and write? Genres considered include courtly love poetry, contemporary feminist verse, oral lament, modern love poetry, bardic verse, storytelling, early modern allegorical poetry, folk song, medieval allegory, and contemporary comic verse, all read in English. Your own work for the course will include papers of literary/cultural analysis, a presentation, and a creative writing option for those who want to flex those muscles.

The Hidden Ireland denotes both a book and a concept. The book was written by Daniel Corkery in 1924 and was an immediate success as it encapsulated a version of Irish history which had not hitherto been available to the general public; it is still considered to be a classic of its kind. The concept promoted the notion that history should emanate from "below" and should not be confined to the elites and governing classes. Both book and concept have had a profound impact on our understanding of Irish identity, Irish history, and Irish literature. This course will examine the book in depth and utilize it to open a window on the hidden Ireland of the 17th and 18th centuries. The cultural, historical, and literary issues which are raised by the book will be studied in the context of the poetry of the period. Poetry will be read in translation.

'Irish Folk Custom and Belief' is both the title of a popular work from 1967 by Seán Ó Súilleabháin (1903-1996), archivist of the Irish Folklore Commission, and an approach to the study of rural Irish popular religion. That approach was long dominant among Irish folklorists. It tended to frame rural popular religion ahistorically and to fudge the issue of its relationship to specific social groups. At the same time it led to the recording of extraordinarily rich data, mostly from the Irish-speaking population of the West. Concentrating on the work of 19th century antiquarians and 20th century folklorists and anthropologists, the course will examine the study of rural popular religion in Ireland. It will contextualise it both in terms of historical, sociological and anthropological knowledge of Irish rural society and specifically of Irish peasant society, and in terms of the scientific study of religion. Specific topics often identified under the headings of 'folk custom and belief' will be discussed, in particular ritual, festival, magic, supernatural beings, sacred places and the oral narratives that deal with them. Specific scholarly texts, including texts by leading contemporary scholars of Irish rural popular religion, will be discussed as well as ethnographic texts recorded by the Irish Folklore Commission.

This course will examine notions of history in oral cultures with special reference to Ireland. Who were those who transmitted oral traditions about historical events? Which genres shaped oral historical traditions? In which contexts were these traditions transmitted? What was the nature of the traditions? What was their content? What relationship did they have to the written record, to counter-hegemonic histories and to official histories? To what extent, if any, can they be said to articulate a national perspective? These are some of the questions that will be addressed, and case studies that illuminate special aspects of the subject such as oral traditions of the Vikings, of 1798, of the Famine and of landlords will be discussed in some detail.

Storytelling allows us to make a place, and a past, come alive, and it is through narrative that certain people, locations, and experiences lodge themselves in our memories. How, and why, do we reshape our own environment to convey certain stories about our past, our accomplishments, and our collective experiences? Why is it that road-trips loom so large in American cultural memory, and what do they have in common with other placelore stories, such as those featuring Native Americans, Irish saints and TV characters like Northern Ireland's 'Derry Girls'? How can words, sounds and imagery be used to map out and draw us into new and often fantastic virtual geographies? In this class, we will think about how stories gain power by being anchored in evocative depictions of specific places, both real and imagined. We will examine verbal and visual stories, from medieval manuscripts like the Book of Kells and tales of St. Patrick's travels around Ireland, to contemporary animation ('Song of the Sea'), murals from Northern Ireland, place-based television series ('Derry Girls') and Chicago-based road-trip films ('The Blues Brothers', 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off'). We will contemplate how icons of ancient Ireland were used to create new spaces in Chicago, and we'll look at the massive 1893 World's Fair that put a newly rebuilt Chicago on the world map, as well as dramatic histories of Chicago and some of its murderous inhabitants (Devil in the White City). We will also turn to regional storytelling traditions and will study songs and stories about 'home' composed by those who experienced diaspora and migration.

This course explores the various literatures (especially poetry) that emerge at a time of dramatic change in early modern (16-17th-century) Ireland, including works originally written in Irish and English ranging from courtly poetry of praise and love for noble patrons to rather less savory verse justifications of colonial violence. In tandem with our reading of primary materials (read in English translation), we will examine the historiography of the period to grasp key debates and shifts in scholarly understanding; in so doing, we will take up long standing areas of debate regarding the characteristics of this colonial encounter, the degree to which comparisons are useful or apt, the nature of Irish literary culture, the characteristics of the age, and, if we're feeling cocky, the modern. While you need not know any Irish (Gaelic) to take this course, you should be prepared to conjoin history and theory, poetry and politics, through historicized close reading while working across genres to produce original criticism in the form of several papers whose topics you will develop yourself (with a creative option or two). In fact, that's the whole point: finding your own passion and doing work that only you can do! The course will count toward the IRLL major and minor, the IRST minor, the European Studies minor.

his course is an introduction, through English-language translations, to the Irish-language novel. We analyze key developments in the novel through a consideration of its historical, literary-historical, and critical contexts. The twentieth century witnessed the development of the novel as part of a linguistic and cultural revival, and a corresponding growth in cultural and political nationalism yet over time, novelists were to the fore in critiquing and satirizing the official national narrative. In our readings, both primary and secondary, we focus on this tension to guide our discussion. A key question to be examined is how do Irish-language novels attend to contemporary Irish and international issues? Many of these texts are primary examples of different literary genres: the Bildungsroman, the Modernist novel, the parodic/satiric novel, the realist and the naturalist novel. We will also carefully consider thematic and formal questions related to these texts' genres. Authors to be studied may include, but are not limited to the following: OLaoghaire, O Conaire, O Grianna, O Cadhain, Mac Grianna, Standun, Ni Dhuibhne, and Wilmot. All texts are will be read in English translation. No prior knowledge of Irish is required. Extra credit is available to those undertaking research through the medium of Irish. This course meets the Literature and Theology Ways of Knowing requirement

By verbal arts is understood storytelling as a practice and the various kinds of narrative -folktales, legends, heroic lays, etc. - that were usual at storytelling events.Not all genres of the verbal arts are narratives, however, but there are also such genres as lyrical songs, proverbs, riddles, etc. This course will examine the Irish verbal arts - in Irish and in English - in a comprehensive way and will study specific texts.

Course Description: This course offers a critical survey of the Modern and Contemporary Short Story in the Irish Language, 1950-2020. In addition to analyzing various literary techniques, themes, and topics, we study the development of the short story form from WWII to the present day. Starting with Máirtín Ó Cadhain, we focus on major developments in literary style, cultural controversies, and debates, not only for what they tell us about Irish literature and culture in general, but the wider impact and purpose of major literary movements such as realism, modernism, metafiction and postmodernism. We trace the impact of Irish politics, society, and culture on the short story form as well as various literary techniques: openings, conclusions, flashbacks, trick endings, use of tension, sentence structure, dialogue, pov, metaphor, and simile. Authors, whose work we study, include: Máirtín Ó Cadhain, Alan Titley, Padraic Breathnach, Mícheál Ó Conghaile, Joe Steve Ó Neachtain, Daithí Ó Muirí, Réaltán Ní Leannán, Biddy Jenkinson, Éilis Ní Dhuibhne, Sean Mac Mathúna, Fionntán de Brún, Roise Ní Bhaoill, Eithne Ní Ghallchobhair, Katherine Duffy and others.

This course will examine Irish poetry, written both in Irish and English, through the prism of protest. It will explore the public role occupied by the poet in Ireland and the concurrent anxieties and responsibilities felt by the poets who have occupied that role. The course will examine the formal prosodic dimensions of the poems and students will also learn about the historical circumstances in which the poems were produced. The course will include the work of WB Yeats, Seán Ó Ríordáin, Seamus Heaney, Máire Mhac an tSaoi, Eavan Boland, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Paula Meehan, Liam Ó Muirthile, Michael O’Loughlin, Aifric MacAodha and Thomas McCarthy.

How is a country remembered? How do time and distance shape what we remember? This course will examine how Ireland is remembered in public and private memory. The course will draw on the memory of the diaspora, of what it means to be Irish American. It will explore representations of Ireland through songs, memoirs, photographs, films, paintings, statues and monuments. Students will have the opportunity to carry out oral interviews with a family member, friend, community member, and write their own memory studies. The course will be anchored in the work of philosophers such as Paul Ricoeur and Barbara Cassin. It will explore the notion of nostalgia. How does it function? How does it influence us? It will also explore what gets remembered at times of commemoration of historical events, such as the 1916 Rising or the Great Famine.

This course will examine and analyze representations of Ireland in film from the Silent era through Hollywood film to the contemporary independant indigenous cinema of today. It will trace the representation of the rural and the urban through the varying utopian/dystopian lenses of film makers from the Kaleb Brothers to John Ford to Jim Sheridan to Lenny Abramson. Films discussed will range from early 20th century silent films to The Quiet Man, Ryan's Daughter, The Commitments, Poitin, The Field, Kings, My Left Foot, Once, Garage, Goldfish Memory and The Guard.

This course will examine the translation of the sacred on the Island of Ireland. It will offer an introduction to translation theory, examining many of the key issues linked to the translation of the sacred texts in a global context before turning its attention to the Irish context. Central to the course will be the translation of the bible into the Irish language, known as Bedel’s bible, undertaken at the behest of Queen Elizabeth the 1. It will examine how translation lay at the heart of the colonial project. Other topics examined will be the issue of Vatican 2 and the question of the vernacular, the Irish language masses composed by people like Seán Ó Riada or Tomás Ó Canainn, and the recent projects which offer a version of the gospels un Ulster Scots

This course will examine the tradition of the long poem in Irish literature, both in the Irish and English languages. It will examine poems such as the epic, An Táin and “Cúirt an Mheánoíche” (The Midnight Court) in a variety of translations, or the poem the “Great Hunger” by Patrick Kavanagh. It will investigate the intersection between the epic and the long poem, and discuss the poetic sequence. It will also examine more contemporary long poems such as those by Martina Evans and Thomas McCarthy, alongside, hyper-contemporary work by Dawn Watson.

Medieval sources preserve amazing stories about journeys to far-flung and fantastical places told from the perspectives of women and men, migrants, pilgrims, colonizers and indigenous peoples. Accounts of Jerusalem, Purgatory, the pagan Otherworld, Ireland and even the Americas, highlight transformative encounters with new peoples, landscapes, and ideas. These stories also illuminate familiar anxieties and beliefs about place and identity, what it means to cross borders, to be exiled from home, and how that can change us, for better and for worse. We consider Celtic, Norse and British sources (voyage tales, Otherworld quests, pilgrimage guides, world maps) as well as contemporary works (Anzaldúa’s La Frontera/Borderlands) and speculative reinventions (an Inuit YA fantasy account of Vikings in America, films like The Green Knight and Howl's Moving Castle). Requirements include an exam, multiple writing exercises (creative writing an option), oral presentations, and 1-2 longer papers. No previous experience is necessary and all are welcome!

Jokes. Word play. Ribaldry. The Macabre. The Grotesque. Wit. Satire. Comic Verse. Parody. This course will read diverse examples of the long and fertile comic tradition in Irish literature (originally composed in Irish and in English), from medieval to modern, in order to enjoy a good laugh, get an alternative take on the Irish literary tradition, think about the politics of (Irish) humor, and get smarter. Authors will include unknown acerbic medieval scribes, satiric bardic poets, Swift, Merriman, Sheridan, Wilde, and Flann O'Brien. No knowledge of Irish is assumed or necessary. Coursework will include plentiful reading, several papers (including a creative option), and a final presentation. The course satisfies the literature requirement and counts toward the IRLL minor and the IRST minor.

This course will examine the practice, practitioners and different genres of the verbal arts: the folktale, legends, epic, proverb, riddle, etc., and will look at the different functions of these genres. It will also look at the research traditions devoted to the study of what has been variously termed folk narrative, oral literature, orature, as well as the verbal arts.

In this class we will read and analyze a range of legends, myths, stories and more recent YA/ fantasy literature about the gods and goddesses, heroes and heroines of early Ireland and Wales. The original accounts, written in the Middle Ages (and read in English translation - no linguistic experience necessary!), provide insights into the medieval cultural contexts and goals behind these stories. However, we will also consider contemporary transformations of Celtic myth and legend in contemporary fiction and pop culture and ask how our expectations and tastes for the Celtic past speak to our worldview today. Requirements include an exam, multiple writing exercises, oral presentations, and 1-2 longer papers.

This course surveys Irish history and literary culture through the specific lens of poetry and song from the sixth century to the present day. Across the turbulent and often traumatic centuries, poets witnessed and gave witness to a multiplicity of experiences and the rich and multifaceted tradition they created is both a reckoning with Irish, European, and global realities, and an imaginative response to them. This course unpacks that poetry's centrality to Irish history, culture and literature, and traces the island's constantly changing and ever evolving poetic traditions and culture. We explore Ireland's traumatic past and turbulent present, the vexed relationship between personal and political identities, as well as the aesthetic, critical and cultural dynamics that came and went during various periods of national formation and social change. Central to the course is an understanding of the complex creative connections between identity politics and aesthetic achievement in Irish poetry and song. All texts are present in original Irish and in translated English.

This course builds on the reading skills that students have acquired in their first four semesters of Irish. The course will be based on the reading of selected short stories from both Gearrscéalta an Chéid and Gearrscéalta ár Linne. The aim is for students to be proficient in reading at advanced level C1 of "Teastas Eorpach na Gaeilge" (The European Certificate of Irish Language).

This is a 6th semester Irish Language course.

Fantasy. Humor. Ribaldry. The Macabre. The Grotesque. Wit. Word play. Satire. Parody. This course will read diverse examples of the long and fertile comic tradition in Irish literature (in Irish and in English), from medieval to modern, in order to enjoy a good laugh, get an alternative take on the Irish literary tradition, and think about the politics of humor. Authors will include unknown acerbic medieval scribes, satiric bardic poets, Swift, Merriman, Sheridan, Wilde, and Flann O'Brien. No knowledge of Irish is assumed or necessary.

This course interrogates and examines representations of the West of Ireland in various twentieth-century literary texts focusing, in particular on the role of "the West of Ireland" in state formation and legitimization during the early decades of independent Ireland and its role in the construction of an Irish identity. We will look at how images of the West of Ireland were constructed in various utopian or romanticized formulations as well as examining more dystopian versions. This course will take an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on the visual arts and film as well as on literary texts written in both Irish and English. (Irish language texts will be read in translation).

A cliché, a painful truth, an old story, a new one—this course explores alcohol and alcoholism in Irish literature, Irish society and Irishness, examining how alcohol infuses the stories Irish people tell and those told about them, and asking what happens if we take alcohol(ism) seriously as a framework and topic of analysis. We will think about the romance and conviviality of drink and drinking and counterposed crusades against drinking, as well as the unromantic and destructive dimension so central to recent writing. We will think about alcohol(ism) in relation to political authority and nationalism, as well as in relation to colonial resistance. We will ask how this "inheritance" travels into Irish America, and even to this campus, asking what legacies are being lived out, and why, and what we make of that. The course will feature a diverse set of texts across a span of Irish literary tradition, including older and contemporary, fiction and memoir, poetry and prose, verbal, visual and musical media, in texts originally composed in Irish (Gaelic) and English (but all read in English, though students who know or are learning Irish are encouraged to examine the texts in Irish). On the way students will work on their speaking, analytical and writing skills, and on being good listeners, peer editors and collaborators in making sense of our texts and world. Course work will include short writing assignments and analytical papers, a presentation, and a creative assignment.

This course will look at how political conflict in Ireland from the 1916 Rebellion and the War of Independence up to and including what became known as "The Troubles" in the North of Ireland has been represented on the screen. Students will analyse a wide variety of cinematic texts, mainstream commercial Hollywood features as well as independent Irish and British films. Documentary film will also be analyzed. Certain seminal events such as Bloody Sunday and the 1981 Hunger Strikes which have a diverse representational history on screen will be given particular attention. Among the films discussed will be Mise Eire, Saoirse, Michael Collins, The Wind that Shakes the Barley, Some Mother's Son, In the Name of the Father, and Bloody Sunday.

This course will explore literatures from a time of dramatic sociopolitical change in early modern (16-17th-century) Ireland, as England was renewing (and energetically justifying) its colonial errand in Ireland, to which Irish people responded in complex ways. We will read a range of texts from royal proclamation to rebel incitements, poetry of love to poetry of the lovelorn, early (anti-Irish, colonialist) ethnography to doggerel travelogue, professional praise poetry to scathing satire, and more. We will look at the intriguing survivals of poetry by women alongside texts that throw Irish manhood into question. In tandem with our reading of primary materials in various languages (read in English translation), we will consider critical debates and shifts in scholarly understanding of the period. Course work will include discussion, reading, short writing assignments and analytical papers, as well as a creative option, as we delve into a fascinating and formative period of Irish history. The course satisfies the literature requirement and counts toward the IRLL major and minor, and the IRST minor.

From the Plantation of Ulster in the early seventeenth century to today the hegemony, and later the survival, of native Irish culture in the Irish language has been challenged by English language culture. This course seeks, by analyzing primary sources in Irish (available to students in translation) in their historical context, to chart this process over time. The course also seeks to ask questions about the extent to which the Irish Catholic population resisted or collaborated in the process of anglicization that took place. Was the 'Sacsa nua darbh ainm Éire' /(New England going by the name of Ireland) culturally alien to the Irish population that resided in it?

The period of the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries represents the onset and consolidation of English (later British) colonial rule in Ireland and sees the breakdown of the old Gaelic social and political orders. This course will examine how the Irish-speaking world reacts to this trauma by focusing on the evolution and development of some key ideas: those of heritage, nationhood, civility and freedom. These concepts will be examined within their historical and literary contexts, Irish, British, European and American. We will closely examine original texts written in Irish, English and Latin especially, from the perspective of both English colonizer and Irish colonized. All materials will be read in English translation.

The Irish language has a fascinating and turbulent history. From being the earliest and most copiously attested European vernacular outside the classical world of Greece and Rome, to a language on the verge of extinction in the late nineteenth century, few languages in Europe have endured such vicissitudes over a millennium and a half. Ireland is indeed unique in Western Europe in modern times in having been the colony of a neighboring country over a period of centuries. Not surprisingly, this colonial experience has left a profound and enduring imprint on the language and on its community of speakers. As much recent work on language endangerment around the world has brought to our attention, a language depends for its continued vitality on the entire material, social and cultural world, or "ecology," that sustains it. When this ecology is attacked and undermined, as occurs under colonialism, a language suffers as a result. The history of the Irish language is therefore a case study in the complexity of a particular human experience over a period of 1500 years; it is a history not of linguistic forms and expressions per se but rather the history of the people who have used and who still use them, of the institutions that have nurtured and been sustained by the language and of the political slings and arrows of fortune that have undermined and threatened (but ultimately failed) to extinguish it. It is therefore a holistic history, a history of Ireland which foregrounds language (principally Irish but also those other languages and their speakers with which it has interacted and competed) as its overarching theme.

Cultural introversion characterised Ireland during World War Two and after, but radical experiment could still be found in such overseas-based authors as Samuel Beckett. By the 1960s, however, Time magazine could report "new spirit in the oul sod." Writers had always sought innovative forms to express underlying realities. Now society itself seemed intent on secularisation, urbanisation, and an expanded role for women. The Irish language was no longer seen as an antique piety but as part of a vibrant counter-culture. However, the eruption of old conflicts in the North suggested not everyone was ready for change. All of these social shifts and renewed controversies led to the creation of major works of literature. As the century drew to a close, voices were raised from within the gay community and Ireland ceased to be monocultural. A period of rapid globalisation saw the "worlding" of Irish writing, only to be followed by a major crisis in the economy which raised the very question of whether Ireland as a cultural project could survive in the twenty-first century. Texts for discussion: Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot Edna O'Brien, The Country Girls Brian Friel, Philadelphia, Here I Come! John Banville, Doctor Copernicus Seamus Heaney, North Frank McGuinness, Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme Nuala Ní Dhómhnaill, Pharaoh's Daughter John McGahern, Amongst Women Brian Friel, Dancing at Lughnasa Seamus Deane, Reading in the Dark Claire Keegan, Foster

IRFL 10010 Introduction to Folklore at UCD; This module is designed to give students a comprehensive overview of what is meant by the term `folklore', and to introduce them to the academic study ofthe subject. In the course of the module, folklore is defined and described in its many manifestations, and students learn about some of the more important sources for the study of folklore and popular tradition in Ireland and abroad. Examples of both oral tradition and material culture are examined, including narrative and storytelling, vernacular architecture and other aspects of ethnology, traditional belief systems and views of the otherworld, and the areas of custom, ritual, music and song. A basic introduction is given to a number of international systems of classification used in the study of folklore, and to some of the more important theoretical approaches to the subject. Contemporary forms of folklore, and the persistence of certain themes in popular culture, are also discussed.

Taught as IRFL20030 The Narrative Art at UCD. In this module, the different genres of narrative will be described, and their traits discussed. The genres include Mythical Tales, Folktales and Oral Legends, as well as shorter forms of story. Irish examples of folk narrative will be analysed individually and on a regional basis, and then will be set within the framework of international folklore. Similarities and differences between oral and literary narrative will be illustrated, and the influences of folklore on the literature of Ireland will also be discussed. Essay: Two 1,500 - 2,000 word essays; Examination: end of semester exam.

Sa chúrsa seo, léifimid agus pléifimid rogha foinsí Gaeilge do stair na hÉireann sa tréimhse 1600-1800. I measc na n-údar a bheidh ar ár n-aire, tá Seathrún Céitinn, Pádráigín Haicéad, Aogán Ó Rathaille agus Art Mac Cumhaigh. Tráchfaimid freisin ar imeachtaí móra na tréimhse in Éirinn agus ar fud an domhain, mar shampla Cogadh na Saoirse i Meiriceá san ochtú céad déag. Léifear agus pléifear na foinsí seo i nGaeilge. (In this course, we will read and discuss a selection of sources in Irish for the history of Ireland between 1600 and 1800. Among the authors to whom we will give attention are Geoffrey Keating, Pádráigín Haicéad, Aogán Ó Rathaille and Art Mac Cumhaigh. We will also talk about momentous happenings of the period in Ireland and around the world, for example the American War of Independence in the eighteenth century. These sources will be read and discussed in Irish.)

The study of various aspects of Irish Language Literature.

In this class, which is offered by special arrangement with the supervising professor, the student researches and writes a senior thesis.

This course is for students undertaking a Senior Thesis. The student will work independently research and write on a topic of the student's own choosing. A thesis advisor will provide assistance throughout the process.