Poets of Modern Ireland:

Text, Context, Intertext

Neil Corcoran

pp xiv223 216x138mm paperback
ISBN 0-7083-1513-5

‘Corcoran’s writing operates at a highly suggestive level of insight, so that perceptive comment on one poet leads revealingly to illumination of the work of another and the relationships between them. This procedure allows an intricate and complex cultural fabric to be experienced as if from the inside.’ (Modern Language Review)

' . . . the essays in Poets of Modern Ireland are all written and argued with enviable subtlety and acuity, regardless of theme.' (Times Literary Supplement)

‘ . . . remarkable critical achievement.’ Irish Studies

‘Neil Corcoran's sensitive account of modern and contemporary Irish poetry offers a mixture of new and substantially revised essays on nine poets ranging from Yeats and Austin Clark to Seamus Heaney and Ciaran Carson. The initial concern is with Yeats and with the work of those poets, like Clarke and Fallon, who had to work in his towering shadow. Contemporary poets too, Corcoran contends, negotiate with each other in complex ways still in some measure related to Yeats. There are illuminating essays on MacNeice, Heaney, Paul Muldoon, Derek Mahon, Michael Longley and Ciaran Carson. What becomes abundantly clear is the complex vitality of the poetry of modern Ireland. There is also a helpful bibliography.’ (Forum for Modern Language Studies)

‘Corcoran at his best is certainly a critic of whom readers of Irish poetry must take heed; he is able to discuss poems with elegance and precision; he writes with clarity, and is untroubled by the repetitious deference and throat-clearings of the theoretically aware; not least, he is a learned and acute observer of modern Irish literature, alert to nuance and reference . . . Poets of Modern Ireland delivers plenty of interesting criticism . . . ’ (Review of English Studies)

Neil Corcoran is one of Britain’s most accomplished commentators on contemporary poetry. In this illuminating contribution to the study of both Irish literature and modern poetry, Corcoran brings a keen critical intelligence and an informed contextual awareness to the work of W. B. Yeats, Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon, Michael Longley, Austin Clarke, Padraic Fallon, Louis MacNeice, Paul Muldoon and Ciaran Carson.

He puts forward a powerful case for certain contextual and intertextual modes of reading the work of these poets. The contexts and intertexts established include: the contentious debate between `nationalist’ and `revisionist’ criticism; the relationship between Irish and American poetry; the writing of `place’ and its political significance; the prominent engagement with issues of sexuality and the erotic; the persistence of the religious impulse or theological content; and the Irish language and the preoccupation with forms of translation.

Poets of Modern Ireland: Text, Context, Intertext is a major contribution to the critical reception of a poetry which has frequently been the focus of some of the most intense and vital contemporary critical debates in Britain, Ireland and America.

Neil Corcoran is Professor of English at the University of St Andrews. His books include The Song of Deeds: A Study of `The Anathemata’ of David Jones (1982), English Poetry since 1940 (1993), After Yeats and Joyce: Reading Modern Irish Literature (1997), and The Poetry of Seamus Heaney: A Critical Study (1998).