After Ireland : writing the nation from Beckett to the present / Declan Kiberd.

"First published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by Head of Zeus Ltd First Floor East London ECIR 3RG."

Ireland is suffering from a crisis of authority. Catholic Church scandals, political corruption, and economic collapse have shaken the Irish people's faith in their institutions and thrown the nation's struggle for independence into question. While Declan Kiberd explores how political failures and economic globalization have eroded Irish sovereignty, he also sees a way out of this crisis. After Ireland surveys thirty works by modern writers that speak to worrisome trends in Irish life and yet also imagine a renewed, more plural and open nation. After Dublin burned in 1916, Samuel Beckett feared "the birth of a nation might also seal its doom." In Waiting for Godot and a range of powerful works by other writers, Kiberd traces the development of an early warning system in Irish literature that portended social, cultural, and political decline. Edna O'Brien, Frank O'Connor, Seamus Heaney, and Michael Hartnett lamented the loss of the Irish language, Gaelic tradition, and rural life. Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Eavan Boland grappled with institutional corruption and the end of traditional Catholicism. These themes, though bleak, led to audacious experimentation, exemplified in the plays of Brian Friel and Tom Murphy and the novels of John Banville. Their achievements embody the defiance and resourcefulness of Ireland's founding spirit--and a strange kind of hope. After Ireland places these writers and others at the center of Ireland's ongoing fight for independence. In their diagnoses of Ireland's troubles, Irish artists preserve and extend a humane culture, planting the seeds of a sound moral economy.-- Provided by publisher

Includes bibliographical references (pages 499-528) and index.

Introduction: After Ireland? -- Beckett's inner exile -- Interchapter: A neutral Ireland? -- 'Gaeldom is over': The bell -- A talking corpse? Sáirséal agus Dill -- A parrot in Ringsend - Máire Mhac an tSaoi -- Growing up absurd: Edna O'Brien and The country girls -- Frank O'Connor: A mammy's boy -- Interchapter: Secularization -- Richard Power and The hungry grass -- Interchapter: Migration -- Emigration once again: Friel's Philadelphia -- Interchapter: Northern troubles -- Seamus Heaney: The death of ritual and the ritual of death -- Interchapter: Europeanization -- The art of science: Banville's Doctor Copernicus -- The double vision of Michael Hartnett -- Brian Friel's Faith healer -- Theatre as opera: The Gigli concert -- Frank McGuinness and The sons of Ulster -- Derek Mahon's Lost worlds -- Interchapter: Irish language -- Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill: Pharaoh's daughter -- Interchapter: Women's movement -- Eavan Boland: Outside history -- John McGahern's Amongst women -- Between First and Third World: Friel's Lughnasa -- Roddy Doyle: Paddy Clarke ha ha ha -- Interchapter: Peace comes dropping slow -- Seamus Deane: Reading in the dark -- Reading Éilis Ní Dhuibhne -- Making history: Joseph O'Connor -- Fallen nobility: McGahern's Rising sun -- Conor McPherson: The seafarer -- Claire Keegan: Foster -- Kate Thompson and The new policeman -- Conclusion: Going global?.