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Languages & Culture
Literature: Twentieth Century Irish Poetry
Early booking is a membership perk for WEA members, where courses are available exclusively before becoming available for everyone else.
Course details
Course code
Q00017458Course date
Start: 20/09/24
End: 29/11/24
Number of classes
11 sessionsTutor
Stephen SmithFee range
Free to £74.00
How you'll learn
Venue
OnlineLevel of study
Availability
This course is for early booking only.
Course overview
Spanning the twentieth century as it does this course will
witness women’s voices interacting with the history of
political change, both domestically and internationally.
Therefore, we will be able to trace themes such as
enfranchisement and cultural emancipation in our texts.
Set against a backdrop of political and cultural change, our
texts will discuss women’s rights, gender and sexuality, and
the woman’s right to imaginative emancipation also.
Interacting with the political and socio-cultural aspect of the
course, we will also discuss how our writers are affected by
and interact with literary/political movements such as
feminism, nationalism, modernism and postmodernism, all of
which have allowed women’s distinctive voices to emerge.
To support consideration of these issues, we will allude to
aspects of the general culture in Britain during the century
such as class and consumerism, and our stories will form a
commentary on the shifting perception of women of
themselves.
Along with these aspects of the course, we will also observe
how women’s voice have helped to reshape the technical and
structural possibilities of the short story form, as the short
story form has experimented with new modes of relating
narrative.
This course is for early booking only.
Course description
The course will begin with the poems of Yeats’, which belong
to the Celtic Twilight, before we consider his poems relating
to the struggle for Irish Independence, before concluding with
his late poems and their relationship with Modernism.
A poet very different from Yeats, but in his own way
remarkable is Patrick Kavanagh, and our discussions will focus
on his poem, The Great Hunger, and his lyrical verse, both of
which are influences on Heaney, particularly his poems of
pilgrimage.
We will then consider Seamus Heaney, and trace his
interactions with the Troubles and his evolution of a mature
style, which made him one of the most remarkable global
poets of the century. Alongside Heaney, we will analyse the
contribution of his contemporaries Michael Longley, Derek
Mahon and Paul Muldoon, who has become the doyen of high
Modernism.
Finally we will explore the work of Louis MacNeice and his
poetic roots in Northern Ireland, noting his lyrical excellence
as a technician of soundscapes within poetry, and his qualities
of acute observation of landscape which influence both
Longley & Mahon.
This will be a course which will open you up for the first time
or again to the beauties of Irish poetry.
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