 Cover of the first edition | |
| Editor | Robert Welch |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | Irish literature |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Publication date | 1996 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| Pages | 648 |
| ISBN | 978-0198661580 |
The Oxford Companion to Irish Literature is a 1996 book edited by Robert Welch.
The Companion to Irish Literature surveys the Irish literary landscape across sixteen centuries with over 2,000 entires [1] Entries range from ogham writing, developed in the 4th century, to the fiction, poetry, and drama of the 1990s. There are accounts of authors such as Adomnán, 7th-century Abbot of Iona,Roddy Doyle, Brian Friel, Seamus Heaney, and Edna O'Brien.[1] Individual entries are provided for all major works, like Táin Bó Cúailnge - the Ulster saga reflecting the Celtic Iron Age - to Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent, Ó Cadhain's Cré na Cille, and Banville's The Book of Evidence.[citation needed]
The book also presents some of the writers' historical contexts:
- The Irish Famine of 1845-8, which provided a theme for novelists, poets, and memoirists from William Carleton to Patrick Kavanagh and Peadar Ó Laoghaire;
- The founding of the Abbey Theatre and its impact on playwrights such as J. M. Synge and Padraic Colum; the Easter Rising which inspired Yeats to write 'Easter 1916'.[citation needed]
It has information on general topics, ranging from the stage Irishman to Catholicism, Protestantism, the Irish language, and university education in Ireland; and on genres such as annals, bardic poetry, and folksong.[1]