Authority and Wisdom in the New Ireland

Carmen Zamorano Llena is Associate Professor of English at Dalarna University, Sweden. She is President of the Nordic Irish Studies Network and edits the literature section of the peer-reviewed journal Nordic Irish Studies. Her current research interests include representations of ageing in Irish and British literature, literature and globalisation, and the migrant experience in contemporary Irish and British literature.
Billy Gray is Associate Professor of English at Dalarna University, Sweden. He edits the section on history, politics and culture in the peer-reviewed journal Nordic Irish Studies. His research interests include Doris Lessing and Sufism, Northern Irish literature, and Irish essayists such as Hubert Butler, Chris Arthur and Conor Cruise O'Brien.

Since the end of the nineteenth century, Ireland has witnessed a profound reconfiguration of its cultural, political, constitutional and religious identities, resulting in an unparalleled questioning of the dominant discourses and narratives that have seemingly defined the nation. The essays in this collection examine the ways in which established Irish socio-cultural structures of authority and their constructs of collective identity have been challenged within literary and cultural discourses of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Every challenge to the purported wisdom of these authority structures adds a new facet to the complexity of Irish national identity and contributes to the continuous evolution of the 'New Ireland', a phrase often used to signify the momentous transformations of the country in times of change.

The identity constructs shaped in the nineteenth-century Irish nation-building process were generated by and, in turn, became guarantors of structures of religious, political and cultural authority. This volume examines how these structures have been challenged within literary and cultural discourses in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Contents: Carmen Zamorano Llena/Billy Gray: Introduction: Versions of Authority and Wisdom in the New Ireland - Ciarán Benson: Fault-Lines of Allegiance in Contemporary Ireland: What Should the Irish Love and Fear to Act More Wisely in the Twenty-First Century? - Mary O'Donnell: Irish Cultural Connections in Poetry, Fiction and on the Street: The Writing of Jean O'Brien, Maurice Scully, Emer Martin and Other Irish Writers - John Wilson Foster: Authority and Wisdom: The Case of Lady Constance Malleson - Carly McLaughlin: «Images of Ireland that matter now»: Colm Tóibín in Conversation - Bent Sørensen: Sean-nós, sean-nua ... sean-nós nua? Constructions of Authority, Tradition and Innovation in Popular Irish Music - Edwige Nault: Challenging Catholic Church Authority on the Abortion Issue since the 1980s - Carmen Zamorano Llena: The Location of the New Ireland: Redefinitions of Memory and Belonging in Sebastian Barry's The Secret Scripture - Benjamin Keatinge: The Charismatic Authority of Paul Durcan - Maciej Ruczaj: «Wise foolishness of saints»: The Evolution of Christian Ethical Radicalism in Patrick Pearse's Writings - John Braidwood: Belonging from Afar: Some Images of the North in the Poetry of Michael Hartnett - Caoimhín de Barra: Protestants Playing Pagans? Irish Nationalism and the Rejection of Pan-Celticism - Bryce Evans: The Shadow of a Gunman: Seán Lemass and National Artistic Expression - Katarzyna Ojrzynska: A New Lens on Tending the Irish Sectarian Wound: Vincent Woods's At the Black Pig's Dyke.