FROM THE PUBLISHER

This study offers a series of readings in Irish culture in the light of the set of crises that beset the project of modernisation in Ireland from the late 1960s onwards. These crises - economic and political in the North, economic in the Republic - are argued to have contributed to a crisis of representation that can be seen to have afflicted a variety of intellectuals - novelists such as John Banville and Dermot Bolger, the playwright Brian Friel, the film-makers Bob Quinn, Pat Murphy and Neil Jordan, and the literary critics Edna Longley and Seamus Deane.

McCarthy locates the source of this problem in the overly narrow conceptualization of modernisation and modernity that has held sway in Irish intellectual life since the 1960s, and in a lack of attention paid to the negative aspects of the processes of modernisation. In particular, McCarthy points to the need to find a more nuanced response to the legacies of nationalism, as we move into the 21st century.

About the Author:

Conor McCarthy teaches at the Institute of Irish Studies, Liverpool University.

FROM THE CRITICS

Booknews

A series of readings of the work of contemporary Irish activist writers, critics, and film-makers with a view to drawing out the ideological implications of their work in the context of the rapidly evolving social, political, and economic conditions in the country during the 1970s and 1980s. The study is revised from McCarthy's (Irish studies, Liverpool U.) doctoral dissertation, for which no date or institution is mentioned. Distributed in the US by ISBS. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Kevin Barry - The Times Literary Supplement