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DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20180219T193000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20180219T210000
DTSTAMP:20260420T110430
CREATED:20171207T203821Z
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SUMMARY:Jews in Irish Literature - 19 Feb
DESCRIPTION:The Irish Literary Society is engaging with writers and academics to reflect on ‘Representations of Jews in Irish Literature’. The innovative research project of the same title was developed out of NUI Galway and Ulster University and forms the centre of tonight’s event. The main objective of the project is to analyse representations of Jews in Irish literature from the earliest times to the present. The project is investigating references to Jews in Irish literature\, whether in Irish or English\, and is collecting more substantial references into an anthology of such writing. In addition to a talk on the findings we will be welcoming a novelist\, poet and scriptwriter to read from and reflect on their work which explores Jewish-Irish connections.  \nThe academic and creative work presented explores the processes of othering by investigating the forces in consciousness and culture which generate the assumptions\, biases\, stereotypes and myths out of which the Jewish other is produced. The representation of the Jew in Irish literature actually tells us much more about Irish than about Jewish identity\, how in fact a whole psychohistory of Irishness is hidden in these neglected representations. \nPresented in association with the Representations of the Jews in Irish Literature Project:\n\n\nSpeaker:\n\nDr Barry Montgomery \nBarry Montgomery is an Irish literary scholar specialising in Irish Jewish Studies and Irish Fiction. He has contributed seven chapters (from the Early Modern Period to the present in Irish fiction\, drama and poetry) to the forthcoming co-authored critical volume of the AHRC funded Ulster University and NUI Galway Representations of Jews in Irish Literature project. He forms part of the project team for the accompanying Exhibition\, which he has promoted on RTÉ radio\, Irish television\, and newspaper interviews\, delivering lectures on Irish Jewish Literary Studies at the Royal Irish Academy\, Dublin\, at The Linen Hall Library\, Belfast (to mark Holocaust Memorial Day\, 2017)\, and related conference papers at The University of Notre Dame\, Indiana\, and Georgetown University\, Washington DC. He has written on Ruth Gilligan’s Nine Folds Make a Paper Swan\, has contributed to the forthcoming Crime Fiction – A Critical Casebook (Peter Lang)\, writing on Richard Head’s The English Rogue (1665)\, and contributed several entries on early nineteenth century fiction to The Cambridge Guide to the Eighteenth-Century Novel\, 1660-1820.\n  \n\nRuth Gilligan\nRuth Gilligan is an Irish novelist and journalist now living in London and working as a Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham. She has published four novels to date\, and was the youngest ever person to reach number one on the Irish bestsellers’ list. Her most recent novel\, Nine Folds Make a Paper Swan (2016)\, was based around the history of the Jewish community in Ireland\, and garnered major critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic. Her short stories have appeared in publications such as The Istanbul Review\, The Irish Pages\, Ambit and Banshee Lit. She writes regular literary reviews for the Guardian\, the TLS\, the LA Review of Books and the Irish Independent where she was a columnist for a number of years. She is also part of the global organisation Narrative 4 which uses storytelling as a tool to foster empathy between diverse communities. \n  \n\nSimon Lewis\nSimon Lewis was the winner of the Hennessy Prize for Emerging Poetry and the runner up in the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award in 2015. He also featured in Poetry Ireland’s Introductions series the same year. He has been shortlisted for the Shine/Strong Award\, Listowel Poetry Prize\, Strokestown International Poetry Prize and Bridport Prize and received commendations in the Gregory O’Donoghue prize and Dromineer Literary Prize. He has also been published in many literary journals and magazines including The Stony Thursday\, Boyne Berries\, Literary Orphans\, The Stinging Fly\, Bare Hands\, and Irish Literary Review. His first collection\, Jewtown\, was published in 2016 by Doire Press. \nSpread the word:
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/jews-in-irish-literature-19-feb/
LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:book signing,exile,folklore,history,interview,judaism,lecture,novel,poetry,politics,Reading,religion,research,social history
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END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20180129T193000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20180129T210000
DTSTAMP:20260420T110430
CREATED:20170812T170028Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20180826T111002Z
UID:9364-1517254200-1517259600@irishliterarysociety.org
SUMMARY:Roddy Doyle - 29 Jan
DESCRIPTION:One of Ireland’s best-loved writers makes his first appearance at the Irish Literary Society. Doyle joins us in conversation on his books\, films\, educational work and his forthcoming novel\, Smile. It tells the captivating story of Victor Forde\, for whom a chance meeting in a pub conjures up long-buried childhood memories – and it’s a book about how we all struggle to accommodate our past selves.\nThere is not a writer currently working in the English language who can match Doyle for the fluency with which he tacks back and forth between the hilarious and the heartbreaking.\nThe New York Times Book Review\nA chance meeting with an old school friend leads his protagonist on a journey back to being taught by Christian Brothers. Smile has all the features for which Doyle has become famous: the razor-sharp dialogue\, the humour\, the superb evocation of childhood – but this is a novel unlike any he has written before. Just moved in to a new apartment\, alone for the first time in years\, Victor Forde goes every evening to Donnelly’s pub for a pint\, a slow one. One evening his drink is interrupted. A man in shorts and pink shirt brings over his pint and sits down. He seems to know Victor’s name and to remember him from school. Says his name is Fitzpatrick. Victor dislikes him on sight\, dislikes too the memories that Fitzpatrick stirs up of five years being taught by the Christian Brothers. He prompts other memories too – of Rachel\, his beautiful wife who became a celebrity\, and of Victor’s own small claim to fame\, as the man who says the unsayable on the radio. But it’s the memories of school\, and of one particular Brother\, that he cannot control and which eventually threaten to destroy his sanity. Doyle will be in conversation with Gavin Clarke. \nSpeaker: Roddy Doyle\n\nRoddy Doyle was born in Dublin in 1958 and grew up in Kilbarrack. After graduating from University College Dublin he spent several years as an English and geography teacher before becoming a full-time writer. His novel Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha won the Booker Prize in 1993. Several of his novels\, including The Commitments and The Snapper have been successfully adapted into films. Doyle’s work is set primarily in Ireland\, especially working-class Dublin. Inspired by David Eggers’ 826 Valencia\, he co-founded the children’s writing charity Fighting Words. Doyle has also written many novels for children\, including the Rover Adventures series. He has also written many short stories\, several of which have been published in The New Yorker. In 2016\, he translated Mozart’s Don Giovanni for the Opera Theatre Company. The stage version of The Commitments\, adapted by Doyle\, opened in London’s Palace Theatre in 2013 and toured Britain and Ireland until May 2016. \nSpread the word:
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/roddy-doyle-29-jan/
LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:book signing,history,interview,Reading
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/doyle-slider.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20171114T180000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20171114T200000
DTSTAMP:20260420T110430
CREATED:20171023T130146Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20171023T173343Z
UID:9630-1510682400-1510689600@irishliterarysociety.org
SUMMARY:Tara Bergin - 14 Nov
DESCRIPTION:The Irish Literary Society is delighted to invite its members to the Embassy of Ireland for an evening with one of Ireland’s most fascinating poets. As there are only limited seats available for this event interested members should apply for tickets via the form below.  \nTara Bergin’s debut collection\, This is Yarrow\, won the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize and she was named a Next Generation Poet by the Poetry Book Society in 2014.\nBergin’s Gothic imagination – precise\, claustrophobic\, yet full of vertiginous perspectives – makes her a perfect guide to these frightened\, frightening times.Paul Batchelor\, The Spectator\nShe will be reading poems from her new collection The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx\, exploring themes of intense love and grief with a dark humour. Bergin’s engagement with the world of myth and folklore was vividly present in This is Yarrow and now in her latest dark fairytale-like images fill the collection as it reflects on the life and death of Eleanor – Karl Marx’s youngest daughter. Eleanor was a member of the Socialist Democratic Federation and translated Flaubert’s Madame Bovary\, before taking her own life in the same way as Emma Bovary. The event will be hosted by the Irish Ambassador Adrian O’Neill.\n\n\n  \n\n\n\nYour Name (required)\n \n\n \nYour Email (required)\n \n\n \nSubject\n \n\n \nYour Message\n \n\n \n\n Δ \n\n\n\n\nSpeaker: Tara Bergin\n\nTara Bergin was born in Dublin and moved to the UK in 2002 to undertake academic research. This culminated in a PhD on Ted Hughes’s translations of the post-war Hungarian poet János Pilinszky which she completed at Newcastle University\, where she is now a part-time lecturer in Creative Writing (Poetry). She began publishing the poems that feature in her debut collection\, This is Yarrow (Carcanet\, 2013)\, in 2003. It won the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize and the 2014 Shine/Strong Award. Bergin was named a Next Generation Poet by the Poetry Book Society in 2014.
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/tara-bergin/
LOCATION:The Embassy of Ireland\, 17 Grosvenor Pl\, London \, London\, SW1X 7HR
CATEGORIES:book signing,folklore,history,interview,Members only-event,poetry,politics,Reading
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/tara_bergin.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20171030T193000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20171030T203000
DTSTAMP:20260420T110431
CREATED:20170903T131534Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20180117T005153Z
UID:9456-1509391800-1509395400@irishliterarysociety.org
SUMMARY:Writing Gay Irish Lives - 30 Oct
DESCRIPTION:In light of social and legal changes in Ireland over recent years the ILS is drawing together Irish writers to consider the representation of queer people in Irish literature. Our panel will be reflecting on London as a place of escape\, queer representation in Irish writing\, homosexuality in the discourse of what constitutes Irishness\, and the integration of queer characters and narratives into the wider culture. Here in London the 50-year anniversary since it stopped being illegal for two men (criminal law\, until Section 28\, targeted only men) to be in a relationship in England and Wales has been widely celebrated\, the law changed in Scotland and Northern Ireland later – not until 1993 was same-sex sexual activity decriminalised in Ireland. Historically many Irish queer people felt compelled to emigrate in search of a more supportive social climate\, the attraction of London was obvious as a metropolitan centre associated with tolerance of sexual diversity and established queer communities. Yet now Ireland now has gay marriage (passed by 62% vote share)\, a young\, openly gay taoiseach and progressive trans recognition legislation – the influence of Catholic dogma has clearly waned. The rich and varied work of our panel will be discussed in the context of these changes and each writer will read from their work.  \nSpeakers:\n\nDr Michael G Cronin\nMichael G Cronin is a Lecturer in English\, specialising in twentieth-century and contemporary Irish literature and in sexuality studies. He received his MA from the University of Sussex\, having studied on the renowned Sexual Dissidence and Cultural Change programme. He subsequently completed a doctorate on the twentieth-century Irish Catholic bildungsroman at Maynooth University\, where he was an IRCHSS Government of Ireland scholar.  Along with Impure Thoughts\, he has published essays on twentieth-century and contemporary Irish fiction\, and on contemporary Irish sexual politics.  He was Guest Editor of a special issue of Irish Review (Irish Review 46\, Autumn 2013) on Irish Studies in the wake of the 2008 crash. He is currently working on a project provisionally entitled ‘Revolutionary Bodies: homoeroticism and the political imagination in Irish writing’.  \n\nMary Dorcey – UNFORTUNATELY MARY WILL NOT NOW BE ABLE TO APPEAR AT THIS EVENT\, 30 OCT\nThe critically acclaimed poet\, short story writer and novelist\, Mary Dorcey was born in County Dublin\, Ireland. She is a member by peer election of ‘Aosdana’ the Irish Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1990 she won the Rooney Prize for Literature for her short story collection: ‘A Noise from the Woodshed.’ Her bestselling novel Biography of Desire (Poolbeg) was published in September of 1997 to critical acclaim and reprinted three times. She was writer in residence at Trinity College for the Centre for Gender and Women’s Studies for ten years where she gives seminars in contemporary English literature and taught a creative writing course. She also taught for four years at University College Dublin. Dorcey’s most recent collection is Perhaps the Heart is Constant after All. (Salmon Poetry. October 2012) \n\nBarry McCrea\nThe Chair of our panel is Barry McCrea\, a novelist and scholar of modern European\, Latin American\, and Irish literature. He most recent book is Languages of the Night: Minor Languages and the Literary Imagination in Twentieth-Century Ireland and Europe (Yale University Press\, 2015)\, which won the American Comparative Literature Association’s René Wellek prize for the best book of 2016. He is the author of The First Verse\, a novel\, winner of a number of awards including the 2006 Ferro-Grumley prize for fiction and a Barnes and Noble “Discover” prize\, and of In the Company of Strangers: Narrative and Family in Dickens\, Conan Doyle\, Joyce and Proust (Columbia University Press\, 2011)\, which won the Yale Heyman Prize for scholarship in the humanities.Professor McCrea holds has a BA in Romance languages from Trinity College Dublin\, and a PhD in comparative literature from Princeton. Before joining Notre Dame\, he taught comparative literature at Yale University\, where he was appointed full professor in 2012. Professor McCrea teaches fall semesters in the Rome and Dublin Global Gateways and spring semesters on campus. \n\nJamie O’Neill\nJamie O’Neill was born in Dún Laoghaire in 1962. He left for England at the age of 17 and lived and worked in England for two decades\, he now lives in Galway. His first novel\, Disturbance\, was published in 1989 and followed by Kilbrack in 1990. Thereafter O’Neill struggled to write and on parting company with both his agent and publisher he took the job as a night porter at the Cassell Hospital\, a psychiatric institution in Surrey from 1990 up to 2000. His critically-acclaimed novel\, At Swim\, Two Boys (2001) earned him the highest advance ever paid for an Irish novel and frequent claims that he was the natural successor to James Joyce\, Flann O’Brien and Samuel Beckett. At Swim\, Two Boys was re-issued this year to mark the 50th anniversary of the decriminalisation of homosexuality in England and Wales. The novel describes a burgeoning love between two teenage boys\, Jim Mack and Doyler\, childhood friends – “cara macree\, pal o’ my heart” – in the early years of the 20th century in Dublin. They meet again some years later in a flute band as 15-year old Doyler teaches Jim to swim. They make a pact – on Easter Sunday 1916\, they will swim to Muglin’s Rock to claim it for themselves and for Ireland.  \n\nCherry Smyth\nCherry Smyth is a poet\, novelist and art critic. Her first poetry collection When the Lights Go Up (Lagan Press\, 2001) traces her move from Ireland to London and the negotiations of identity required in a new country. One Wanted Thing (Lagan Press\, 2006)\, her second volume\, is less concerned with loss than with a buoyant affirmation of love\, acceptance and the wider issues of the fall-out of events like 9/11 and 7/7: how these changed our world-view. In Test\, Orange (Pindrop Press\, 2012)\, she brings together a range of poetic forms from haiku to longer free-verse poems dealing with things we face in a female body. In 2000–01\, Cherry was writer-in-residence in a women’s prison and published their extraordinary work in A Strong Voice in a Small Space (Cherry Picking Press\, 2002)\, which won the Raymond Williams community-publishing prize in 2003. She has been teaching writing poetry in the Creative Writing Department of the University of Greenwich since 2004. She was appointed a Royal Literary Fellow\, 2014-2016. Her novel Hold Still (Holland Park Press\, 2013) charts the role of Irish woman Jo Hiffernan as muse to both Whistler and Courbet. \nSpread the word:
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/writing-gay-lives/
LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:book signing,exile,history,interview,novel,poetry,politics,Reading,social history,tradition
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/gay-lives_3.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20170712T180000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20170712T200000
DTSTAMP:20260420T110431
CREATED:20170630T231726Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20170701T082240Z
UID:9310-1499882400-1499889600@irishliterarysociety.org
SUMMARY:History of Modern Ireland - 12 July
DESCRIPTION:The Ambassador of Ireland Mr. Daniel Mulhall and Mrs. Greta Mulhall invite members of the ILS to the launch of ‘The Cambridge History of Modern Ireland’ Edited by Eugenio F. Biagini and Mary E. Daly at the Embassy of Ireland on 12th July 2017 from 18.00 – 20.00. This event is open to ILS members only and tickets will be allocated by lottery. \nRSVP essential by 5 July: irishlitsoc@gmail.com
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/history-of-modern-ireland-12-july/
LOCATION:The Embassy of Ireland\, 17 Grosvenor Pl\, London \, London\, SW1X 7HR
CATEGORIES:history,interview,Members only-event,special event
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/embassy-history.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20170626T193000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20170626T210000
DTSTAMP:20260420T110431
CREATED:20170418T182200Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20171123T225429Z
UID:9088-1498505400-1498510800@irishliterarysociety.org
SUMMARY:Eavan Boland - 26 June 2017
DESCRIPTION:Widely considered to be one of Ireland’s most important contemporary poets\, Eavan Boland is currently a Professor of Humanities and Director of the Creative Writing Programme at Stanford University\, where she has taught since 1996. In 2015 a New Collected Poems was published\, and Eavan Boland: Inside History\, a book celebrating her long and distinguished career\, was recently published by Arlen House\, its editor will join in conversation with Boland. In January 2017 Boland was appointed editor of Poetry Ireland Review.\nPoetry has been an integral part of Eavan Boland’s life since she was a young girl. In college she wrote her first publication\, 23 Poems. She has gone on to publish nearly 20 books of poetry\, winning awards and accolades from readers and critics alike. Boland\, a self-described “woman poet\,” has always had trouble reconciling those two words. “It was like there was a magnetic opposition between the two concepts\,” she said. “The woman coming from the collective sense of nurture in Ireland\, and the poet coming from the much more individualist\, creative realm.” Mary Robinson quoted Eavan Boland’s poetry during her inaugural speech as President of Ireland in Dublin Castle on 3 December 1990\, and on 15 March 2016 President Obama quoted lines from her poem “On a Thirtieth Anniversary” (from Against Love Poetry) in his remarks at a reception in the White House to celebrate St Patrick’s Day. \nBoland’s is a fascinating career which develops from her early attachment to Yeats\, her growing unease with the absence of women’s writing\, her encounter with pioneering American poets like Sylvia Plath\, Elizabeth Bishop\, and Adrienne Rich\, and her lucid\, critical engagement through poetry and prose with Ireland’s poetic tradition. \nThis event was formerly advertised as the ILS Annual Dinner\, the dinner part of the evening has now been cancelled. \nGuest of Honour: Eavan Boland\n\nBoland\, the youngest of five children\, was born in Dublin in 1944. Her father was a diplomat\, her mother\, Frances Kelly\, an artist. The family moved to London when Boland was six and she went to school there until 1956. Her poem An Irish Childhood in England: 1951 recalls her sense of otherness at this early age: \n…the teacher in the London convent who\,\nwhen I produced “I amn’t” in the classroom\nturned and said — “You’re not in Ireland now.” \nDuring her father’s next posting\, from 1956 until 1960\, the family lived in New York. Boland returned to Dublin and to boarding school at the Convent of the Holy Child in Killiney when she was fifteen. At Trinity College she studied Latin and English and graduated with a first-class honours degree in 1966. She lectured in Trinity 1967-1968 and then resigned to devote her time to writing. She wrote poems as a child and had published poems in the Irish Times while still an undergraduate. She published her first collection\, New Territory\, in 1967\, when she was twenty-two. During the 1970s she gave writing workshops throughout Ireland and in 1980 she co-founded Arlen House\, an Irish feminist press. \nFor Boland\, what she calls ‘the placelessness of her childhood’ and ‘her emphatic sense of living in a suburb in her own home’ were important influences on her work. In 1969\, in her mid-twenties\, she married the novelist Kevin Casey. They moved to a house in the Dublin suburbs in the early 1970s and have two daughters. A grandchild was born in 2014. She has written of motherhood and suburban life and according to Declan Kiberd ‘She is one of the very few Irish poets to describe with any fidelity the lives now lived by half a million people in the suburbs of Dublin.’ \nSince 1996\, Boland spends the academic year at Stanford College\, Palo Alto\, California\, where she is a Professor of Humanities and Director of the Creative Writing Programme\, but she calls Dundrum home. Speaking in 1988\, Boland said of herself: ‘I see myself as an Irish poet\, I think it’s important that Irish poets have a discourse with the idea of Irishness\, and I think it’s probably very important that an Irish woman poet doesn’t shirk that discourse because there have been gaps\, vacancies or silences in literature’.
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/annual-dinner-eavan-boland-26-june-2017/
LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:America,art,biography,book signing,exile,history,interview,poetry,politics,Reading
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/eavan-boland3-slider.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20170327T193000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20170327T210000
DTSTAMP:20260420T110431
CREATED:20170116T132920Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20171123T230326Z
UID:8932-1490643000-1490648400@irishliterarysociety.org
SUMMARY:Mícheál Mac Craith - 27 March
DESCRIPTION:Professor Mícheál Mac Craith will deliver the 2017 joint Irish Texts Society / Irish Literary Society Noel O’Connell Lecture on the subject of ‘Robin Flower and Irish Love Poetry’. \nPresented in association with the Irish Texts Society:\n\n\nSpeaker:\n\nMícheál Mac Craith\nMícheál Mac Craith is a Franciscan priest who was Professor of Modern Irish at the National University of Ireland\, Galway from 1997 until his retirement in August 2011. He studied in Galway\, Rome and Louvain. His books are Lorg na hIasachta ar na Dánta Grá (1989)\, a study of the foreign influences on Gaelic courtly love poetry\, and Ón Oileán Rúin go Rún an Oileáin (1993)\, a study of the poetry of Máirtín Ó Direáin. He is interested in the Renaissance\, Counter-Reformation literature\, Jacobitism\, Ossianism and contemporary Gaelic literature\, and has published extensively in these areas. In 1997 he was awarded a Visiting Fellowship in the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh. In 2003 he was Visiting Fellow at St Edmund’s College\, Cambridge\, and Associate Research Fellow at the Department of Anglo-Saxon\, Norse and Celtic at the University of Cambridge. In 2008 the Irish Research Council in the Humanities and Social Sciences awarded him a Senior Research Fellowship to investigate the period spent by the exiled earls\, O’Neill and O’Donnell\, in Rome. He is now Guardian at Collegio San Isidoro in Rome.
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/micheal-mac-craith-27-march/
LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:history,Irish language,lecture
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/ils-its_20172.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20170227T193000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20170227T210000
DTSTAMP:20260420T110431
CREATED:20170109T151132Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20171123T230615Z
UID:8846-1488223800-1488229200@irishliterarysociety.org
SUMMARY:Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin - 27 Feb
DESCRIPTION:Renowned poet Ní Chuilleanáin is the current Ireland Professor of Poetry\, she was a founding member and editor of the literary journal Cyphers and is one of the major Irish poets of her generation. This is her first visit to the Irish Literary Society and she will be reading from her own work. Ní Chuilleanáin is the Vermeer of contemporary poetry. Her luminous interiors achieve great visual beauty\, but should not be mistaken for exercises in escapism. They are sites where history and the individual brush against each other\, force fields of action and radiant understanding.\nAingeal Clare\, The Guardian\nShe has won numerous awards and in addition to her poetic output has been an innovative and important publisher of other Irish writers and has translated poetry from Irish (most recently Máire Mhac an tSaoi)\, Italian (Maria Attanasio\, Antonella Anedda and several others) and from the Romanian poetry of Ileana Mӑlӑncioiu The Legend of the Walled-Up Wife (2012). With Medbh McGuckian\, Ní Chuilleanáin also co-translated the poems of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill in The Water Horse (2001). \nSpeaker:\n\nEiléan Ní Chuilleanáin\nBorn 1942 in Cork\, she is an Emeritus Fellow of Trinity College\, Dublin\, where she has taught\, researched and written on Renaissance literature and translation\, since 1966; with her husband Macdara Woods\, the late Leland Bardwell and the late Pearse Hutchinson\, she is a founder and (since 1975) co-editor of the Irish poetry journal Cyphers. Her seventh collection of poetry\, The Sun-Fish\, was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and won the Griffin International Prize for poetry in 2010; The Boys of Bluehill was published in 2015 by Gallery Press\, and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize\, the Irish Times Poetry Now Award and the Pigott Prize at the Listowel Writers’ Week.
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/eilean-ni-chuilleanain-27-feb/
LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:history,Irish language,lecture,poetry
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Eilean_slider-1.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20170130T193000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20170130T203000
DTSTAMP:20260420T110431
CREATED:20161208T132154Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20171123T230959Z
UID:8719-1485804600-1485808200@irishliterarysociety.org
SUMMARY:Sebastian Barry - 30 Jan
DESCRIPTION:The great Irish writer Sebastian Barry visits the ILS on 30 January to join in conversation with Prof Roy Foster about his new novel Days Without End. \nThe novel continues Barry’s saga of two Irish families\, the Dunnes and the McNultys\, which has spanned several novels and multiple time frames and locations. The Guardian has called the sequence ‘one of the most compelling\, bravura and heart-wrenching fictional projects of recent memory.’A beautiful\, savage\, tender\, searing work of art. Sentence after perfect sentence it grips and does not let go.Donal Ryan\n‘Time was not something then we thought of as an item that possessed an ending\,\nbut something that would go on for ever\, all rested and stopped in that moment.\nHard to say what I mean by that. You look back at all the endless years when you\nnever had that thought. I am doing that now as I write these words in Tennessee. I\nam thinking of the days without end of my life. And it is not like that now…’ \nAfter signing up for the US army in the 1850s\, aged barely seventeen\, Thomas\nMcNulty and his brother-in-arms\, John Cole\, go on to fight in the Indian wars and\,\nultimately\, the Civil War. Having fled terrible hardships themselves\, they find these days to be vivid and filled with wonder\, despite the horrors they both witness and are complicit in. Their lives are further enriched and endangered when a young Indian girl crosses their path\, and the possibility of lasting happiness emerges\, if only they can survive.A violent\, superbly lyrical western offering a sweeping vision of America in the making [and] the most fascinating line-by-line first person narration I’ve come across in years.Kazuo Ishiguro\nMoving from the plains of the West to Tennessee\, Sebastian Barry’s latest work is a masterpiece of atmosphere and language. Both an intensely poignant story of two men and the lives they are dealt\, and a fresh look at some of the most fateful years in America’s past\, Days Without End is a novel never to be forgotten. \nSpeakers:\n\nSebastian Barry\nSebastian Barry was born in Dublin in 1955. His novels and plays have won the Costa Book of the Year award\, the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Prize\, the Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year\, the Independent Booksellers Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. He also had two consecutive novels\, A Long Long Way (2005) and the top ten bestseller The Secret Scripture (2008)\, shortlisted for the MAN Booker Prize. He lives in Wicklow.\n\n\nProf Roy Foster\nRoy Foster recently retired as Carroll Professor of Irish history at Oxford\, he is a fellow of Hertford College. He has written widely on Irish history\, society and politics in the modern period\, as well as on Victorian high politics and culture. Foster produced a widely acclaimed biography of William Butler Yeats which was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. In Words Alone: Yeats and his inheritances (2011)\, he presents a re-reading of Irish literary history throughout the nineteenth century and places Yeats and his inspirations in apposition to a much wider range of literary and political precursors than is usually the case. His most recent book is Vivid Faces: the revolutionary generation in Ireland 1890-1914.
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/sebastian-barry-30-jan/
LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:America,book signing,history,interview,novel,Reading
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/sebastian-barry-copy.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20150518T193000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20150518T203000
DTSTAMP:20260420T110431
CREATED:20161006T192912Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20171123T234536Z
UID:8368-1431977400-1431981000@irishliterarysociety.org
SUMMARY:Ó Conaire in London - 18 May
DESCRIPTION:The ILS / ITS Noel O’Connell Annual Memorial Lecture will be given by Dr Pádraigín Riggs on the subject of ‘The role of London in the life and work of Pádraic Ó Conaire (1882-1928)’. This lecture is organised in conjunction with the Irish Texts Society. \nPádraig Ó Conaire was born in Galway city in 1882 and died in Dublin in 1928. From 1900 to 1915 he lived in London\, where he was employed as a civil servant at the Board of Education. During this period he was a teacher of Irish in classes organised by the Gaelic League and London County Council and took part in plays staged by the League. One of the most distinguished and prolific of the writers of the early Irish-language Revival\, he published over 400 short stories\, over 200 essays\, one novel and a small number of plays. His novel Deoraíocht (1910) was largely set in London and it has been described by James M. Cahalan (The Irish Novel: A Critical History) as “the most innovative\, forward looking Irish novel in either language…before the arrival of Joyce as a novelist…”\nPresented in association with the Irish Texts Society:\n\n\n\nSpeaker:\n\nDr Pádraigín Riggs\nDr Pádraigín Riggs was a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Modern Irish\, UCC\, until her recent retirement. She has published studies of the Irish-language writers Donncha Ó Céileachair and Pádraic Ó Conaire\, and she is currently engaged in writing a biography of Eleanor Hull\, who was a President of the Irish Literary Society and one of the founders of the Irish Texts Society\, and its first Honorary Secretary. As well as her prolific academic writing on modern Irish-language literature she is also an established literary critic in that area. She is a member of the Council of the Irish Texts Society and is secretary of the committee that organises the annual Irish Texts Society/UCC Irish Departments Seminar and has edited three volumes of that Seminar’s Proceedings in the ITS Subsidiary Series. She has a deep interest in the history of the Irish in London.
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/o-conaire-in-london-18-may/
LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:biography,Collaboration,history,Irish language,lecture
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/its_2015.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20141030T193000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20141030T203000
DTSTAMP:20260420T110431
CREATED:20161006T185220Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20171123T234856Z
UID:8356-1414697400-1414701000@irishliterarysociety.org
SUMMARY:Cover-up in the Congo? - 30 Oct
DESCRIPTION:Dr Kennedy’s recent book Ireland\, the UN and the Congo takes a fresh look at Ireland’s part in the UN’s disastrous mission in the Congo in the early 1960s. In summer 1961 Irish diplomat Conor Cruise O’Brien was appointed UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold’s Special representative in the breakaway Congolese province of Katanga. In ONUC\, its biggest peacekeeping mission to date\, the UN had deployed to Congo a year previously to try to stabilise the newly independent African state. The Secretary General and his officials got drawn into the lethal realities of Congolese and Katangese politics.\nAs a military and diplomatic history it has many strengths\, principally its showcasing of original and highly revealing archival material\, and an admirable clarity in providing a more robust and honest version of the mission than has been available to date. This is partly due to the book’s joint authorship. Michael Kennedy has long been established as an impressive historian of Irish foreign policy\, while his collaborator\, Art Magennis\, undertook two tours of duty in the Congo. Diarmaid Ferriter\, in the Irish Times\nMystery still surrounds the events of September 1961 in Katanga where UN peacekeepers\, including Irish soldiers\, unsuccessfully went to war against the province in an attempt to ends its secession. Peacekeepers\, Katangese military and civilians were killed\, both sides committed atrocities which were only partially reported\, Hammarskjold died in a mysterious plane crash whilst seeking to end the fighting\, and some months later O’Brien was forced to resign\, ostensibly for reasons related to his private life. With the release of the UN’s own archives on the Congo mission O’Brien’s actions\, Hammarskjold’s involvement in authorising the UN’s military action against Katanga\, and the UN’s subsequent protestations that the organisation and the Secretary General knew nothing of ONUC’s intentions in Katanga can be examined for the first time. The new records call into question existing accounts of the UN mission in Congo. O’Brien’s account of his UN service\, written immediately after his resignation\, To Katanga and Back is a classic but with the release of the UN’s archives\, the limitations of the works appear. \nFifty years later a major re-evaluation of the UN’s failed military adventure in Katanga is possible\, and using material from archives in New York\, Stockholm\, Dublin and London this talk hopes to provide a greater insight into a hitherto secret and mystifying chapter of the UN’s history. \nSpeakers:\n\nDr Michael Kennedy\nDr Kennedy has written widely on British-Irish relations and on cross-border relations in Ireland\, including Division and Consensus: the politics of cross-border relations in Ireland 1921-1969 (Dublin\, 2000). He has also written extensively on Ireland’s foreign and defence policies\, including Ireland and the League of Nations\, 1919-46 (Dublin\, 1996)\, Obligations and Responsibilities: Ireland and the United Nations\, 1955-2005 (with Deirdre McMahon) (Dublin\, 2005)\, Guarding Neutral Ireland (Dublin\, 2008) and The Irish Defence Forces 1940-49: The Chief of Staff’s Reports (Dublin\, 2011) (with Commandant Victor Laing). He has recently co-edited\, with John Doyle\, Ben Tonra and Noel Dorr\, the first text book on Ireland’s international relations\, Irish Foreign Policy\, which was published by Gill and Macmillan earlier this year. Dr Kennedy is a member of the Irish Manuscripts Commission and a Research Associate of the Centre for Contemporary Irish History\, Trinity College\, Dublin.
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/cover-up-in-the-congo-30-oct/
LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:history,lecture,politics,social history
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/kennedy-1.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20140530T073000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20140530T210000
DTSTAMP:20260420T110431
CREATED:20161015T180828Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20171123T234943Z
UID:8491-1401435000-1401483600@irishliterarysociety.org
SUMMARY:Irish Atlantic World - 30 May
DESCRIPTION:Whores\, Wenches\, and the Blake Family in the Early Modern Irish Atlantic World \nProfessor Jenny Shaw will explore the lives of two women: one an indentured Irish servant (the “whore”); one an enslaved woman (the “wench”) who labored in the household of Irish merchant John Blake in Barbados 1675. She explores the techniques historians use to write the lives of ordinary people\, even when their stories are only available through a handful of letters\, and demonstrates how race\, gender\, and status combined to shape the role of Irish Catholic elites in the early modern English Caribbean.  \nSpeaker:\n\nProfessor Jenny Shaw\nShaw received her Ph.D. from New York University in Atlantic History in 2009. Her first book\, Everyday Life in the Early English Caribbean: Irish\, Africans\, and the Construction of Difference is forthcoming this autumn with the University of Georgia’s Early American Places series. She is the co-author (with Kristen Block) of an article entitled Subjects without an Empire: The Irish in the Early Caribbean\, which appeared in Past and Present in 2011\, and she has received funding for her work from (among others) the Lewis L. Glucksman Foundation at University College\, Cork\, the Doris G. Quinn Foundation\, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/irish-atlantic-world-30-may/
LOCATION:Westminster City Hall\, Westminster City Hall 64 Victoria Street  London  \, London\, SW1E 6QP\, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:history,lecture,research
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/atlantic.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20140424T073000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20140424T203000
DTSTAMP:20260420T110431
CREATED:20161013T221030Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20171123T235006Z
UID:8465-1398324600-1398371400@irishliterarysociety.org
SUMMARY:Women and Exile - 24 April
DESCRIPTION:This talk will look at the place of the Irish woman migrant in contemporary Irish fiction and examine how Irish writers have demonstrated a sustained interest in recovering the story of the Irish woman emigrant\, a story that until relatively recently was absent or under-represented in both historical accounts and literary representations of Irish emigration. In spite of the fact that the theme of ‘exile’ has near cult status in Irish literature\, it seems to be a cultural preoccupation that overlooked the experience of the woman emigrant; it too often appointed her to roles that served only to define the losses suffered by her male counterpart and\, in particular\, the male artist in his journey into the world. \nEdna O’Brien and Colm Tóibín offer two different models for recovering this history. Toibin’s work\, particularly his novel Brooklyn (2009)\, shows an historically sensitive concern with the vanishing Irish woman emigrant in Ireland of the 1950s\, while O’Brien’s more recent writing\, especially her 2006 novel\, The Light of Evening\, remodels the familiar paradigm of the Irish artist in exile in ways most meaningful to the Irish woman writer. Drawing on archival material from the Tóibín Papers at the National Library of Ireland and the O’Brien Papers at the James Joyce Library at University College Dublin\, McWilliams makes a case study of how these authors contribute to the larger recovery of the history of the woman migrant in contemporary Irish fiction.\nSpeaker:\n\nEllen McWilliams\nEllen’s teaching and research interests are in the fields of women’s writing\, Irish\, American\, and Canadian literature\, and writing and diasporic identity. She has written two monographs\, Margaret Atwood and the Female Bildungsroman (2009) and Women and Exile in Contemporary Irish Fiction (2013)\, and is working on a new book\, Irishness in North American Women’s Writing: Transatlantic Affinities. She has a special interest in New York magazine culture and has recently completed a series of articles on Maeve Brennan’s writing for The New Yorker\, including an essay for Women: A Cultural Review: ‘”A Sort of Rathmines Version of a Dior Design”: Maeve Brennan\, Self-Fashioning\, and the Uses of Style’. Ellen has received a number of awards for research\, including an AHRC Fellowship\, a Fulbright Scholar Award\, and a British Library-Eccles Centre Visiting Fellowship in North American Studies.
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/women-and-exile-24-april/
LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:exile,history,lecture,research,social history
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/mcwilliams.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20140227T193000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20140227T210000
DTSTAMP:20260420T110431
CREATED:20161015T120324Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20171123T235259Z
UID:8480-1393529400-1393534800@irishliterarysociety.org
SUMMARY:Dublin Lockout - 27 Feb
DESCRIPTION:This month’s lecture will be delivered by Padraig Yeates on the Dublin Lockout\, the past year of commemoration and lessons drawn from the experience. \nOn 26 August 1913 the trams stopped running in Dublin. Striking conductors and drivers\, members of the Irish Transport Workers’ Union\, abandoned their vehicles. They had refused a demand from their employer\, William Martin Murphy of the Dublin United Transport Company\, to forswear union membership or face dismissal. The company then locked them out. Within a month\, the charismatic union leader\, James Larkin\, had called out over 20\,000 workers across the city in sympathetic action. By January 1914 the union had lost the battle\, lacking the resources for a long campaign. But it won the war: 1913 meant that there was no going back to the horrors of pre-Larkin Dublin. Yeates outstanding survey in Lockout: Dublin 1913 has already established itself as the definitive work on the Lockout. \nImage: Part of the 1913 Lockout tapestry as designed by Robert Ballagh \nSpeakers:\n\nPadriag Yeates\nPadraig Yeates is a member of the 1913 Committee that co-ordinated events around the Lockout Centenary during 2013. He is a former Industry and Employment Correspondent of the Irish Times and has been a union activist all his life. He has written several books including Lockout: Dublin 1913\, A City in Wartime: Dublin 1914-1918 and A City in Turmoil: Dublin 1919 -1921.
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/dublin-lockout-27-feb/
LOCATION:The Doubletree by Hilton\, 2 Bridge Place\, Victoria\, London\, SWIV 1QA\, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:history,lecture,politics,research,social history
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20131128T073000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20131128T210000
DTSTAMP:20260420T110431
CREATED:20161015T185805Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20171123T235328Z
UID:8502-1385623800-1385672400@irishliterarysociety.org
SUMMARY:The Abbey\, where next? - 28 Nov
DESCRIPTION:To turn O’Connell Street into the Broadway of Ireland; The Debate over the Relocation of the Abbey Theatre. \nThe Irish Literary Society is delighted to present its 2nd Joint Lecture with the Centre for Irish Studies (CIS)\, St Mary’s University College. \nFrom its foundation in 1904 The Abbey\, Ireland’s national theatre\, has been located at Lower Abbey Street in Dublin. However from 2001 to 2012 an often heated debate about its relocation took place in the two houses of the Irish Parliament (Dáil Éireann and Seanad Éireann) and the Irish national press. This lecture will examine the debate within the context of the idea of national theatres as public monuments\, as agents in urban regeneration\, and consider the modern Abbey’s role as a key element in Dublin’s competition for international cultural tourism. \nPresented in association with the Centre for Irish Studies\, St Mary’s University\, Twickenham:\n\n\n\nSpeaker:\n\nShaun Richards\nShaun Richards is Professorial Research Fellow\, CIS St Mary’s\, the author of Writing Ireland (1988 with David Cairns)\, Mapping of Irish Theatre (2013\, with Chris Morash)\, the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Irish Drama (2006) and scores of articles on Irish theatre published in Etudes Irlandais\, Irish Studies Review and Irish University Review amongst others. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Sao Paulo and a consultant with the Cia Ludens theatre company that specialises in adapting Friel\, Murphy and other Irish plays to the Brazilian stage in translation.
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/the-abbey-where-next-28-nov/
LOCATION:The Doubletree by Hilton\, 2 Bridge Place\, Victoria\, London\, SWIV 1QA\, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:architecture,Collaboration,history,lecture,theatre
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/abbey.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20130425T193000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20130425T210000
DTSTAMP:20260420T110431
CREATED:20161015T193055Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20171123T235352Z
UID:8519-1366918200-1366923600@irishliterarysociety.org
SUMMARY:Robin Flower and The Great Blasket - 25 Apr
DESCRIPTION:The 2013 ILS/Irish Texts Society Noel O’Connell Memorial Lecture will be delivered by Professor Seán Ó Coileán\, Professor Emeritus of Modern Irish at University College\, Cork and Member of the Royal Irish Academy.  \nThe subject of his lecture will be\, ’The ITS volume that never was: Robin Flower and The Great Blasket’. This annual lecture is organised in conjunction with the Irish Texts Society & will be hosted by the ILS. Flower’s The Western Island tells the history of the Great Blasket\, of the frugality and adversities of life on the island\, its folktales (including stories of ghosts and fairies)\, and also recounts the dramatic day in the Great Blasket’s history when the flying galleons of the Spanish Aramada were destroyed on its coast. \nImage: Tomás Ó’Croimthainn and Robin Flower \nPresented in association with the Irish Texts Society:\n\n\n \nSpeakers:\n\nSeán Ó Coileáin\nFollowing undergraduate and postgraduate studies at UCC\, Professor Seán Ó Coileán was awarded the Travelling Studentship of the National University of Ireland in 1967\, choosing to study at Harvard\, where he was greatly influenced by the work of Professor John V. Kelleher in Irish history and literature and of Professor Albert B. Lord in oral theory and composition. Their teaching informs much of his own subsequent writings in the area of Irish literature\, from the Guaire cycle (the subject of his Harvard Ph.D.) to Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire. An influence of a different kind\, which also grew into personal friendship\, was that of Seán Ó Ríordáin; his literary biography of Ó Riordáin was awarded the literary prize of the Irish-American Cultural Institute in 1984. Other scholarly interests include the literature of the Great Blasket\, his work on which includes a new edition of An tOileánach (Cló Talbóid\, 2001). A long-time member of the Senate of the National University\, he takes an active interest in Irish-language matters and is Chairman of Gaelachas Teoranta which overseas the operations of Coláiste an Phiarsaigh and Scoil na nÓg in Glanmire\, County Cork. He is a member of the Folklore of Ireland Council.
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/robin-flower-and-the-great-blasket-25-apr/
LOCATION:The Doubletree by Hilton\, 2 Bridge Place\, Victoria\, London\, SWIV 1QA\, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:Collaboration,folklore,history,Irish language,lecture,research
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/robin-fowe.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20130228T193000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20130228T203000
DTSTAMP:20260420T110431
CREATED:20161121T073625Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20171123T235422Z
UID:8626-1362079800-1362083400@irishliterarysociety.org
SUMMARY:Hubert Butler - 28 Feb
DESCRIPTION:Robert Tobin’s study of Butler is masterly … Tobin mixes familiarity with objectivity\, scrupulous scholarship\, and a gossip’s curiosity.Caroline Bowder\, Church Times‘How do such people\, with brilliant members and dull ones\, fare when they pass from being a dominant minority to being a powerless one?’ So asked the Kilkenny man‐of‐letters Hubert Butler (1900‐91) when considering the fate of Southern Protestants after Irish Independence. As both a product and critic of this culture\, Butler posed the question repeatedly\, refusing to accept as inevitable the marginalization of his community within the newly established state. Inspired by the example of the Revivalist generation\, he challenged his compatriots to approach modern Irish identity in terms complementary rather than exclusivist. In the process of doing so\, he produced a corpus of literary essays European in stature\, informed by extensive travel\, deep reading\, and an active engagement with the political and social upheavals of his age. His insistence on the necessity of Protestant participation in Irish life\, coupled with his challenges to received Catholic opinion\, made him a contentious figure on both sides of the sectarian divide.  \nThis study therefore seeks to address not only Butler’s remarkable personal career but also some of the larger themes to which he consistently drew attention: the need to balance Irish cosmopolitanism with local relationships; to address the compromises of the Second World War and the hypocrisies of the Cold War; to promote a society in which constructive dissent might not just be tolerated but valued. As a result\, by the end of his life Butler came to be recognized as a forerunner of the more tolerant and expansive Ireland of today. \nSpeaker:\n\nRev. Robert Tobin\nRobert Tobin was raised in Boston and Texas and took his first degree in English from Harvard. After graduation\, he taught school in South Africa and backpacked from Cape Town to Cairo. Awarded a Fulbright Scholarship\, he went on to take his M.Phil in Anglo-Irish Literature at Trinity College Dublin\, studying with Professor Terence Brown. He then went to Merton College Oxford to pursue doctoral research under the supervision of Professor R.F. Foster. Having completed his D. Phil.\, he spent three years at Cambridge studying for ordination in the Church of England\, after which he served as a curate in Buckinghamshire and as the Episcopal/Anglican Chaplain at Harvard. Currently he serves as Chaplain and Tutor at Oriel College Oxford. His book\, The Minority Voice: Hubert Butler and Southern Irish Protestantism\, 1900-91 appeared in the Oxford Historical Monographs series in 2012. He is now pursuing research on the social transformation of the American Episcopal Church in the 1960s. Follow the link for information about Butler and the recent Notting Hill edition of his European Essays.
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/hubert-butler-28-feb/
LOCATION:The Doubletree by Hilton\, 2 Bridge Place\, Victoria\, London\, SWIV 1QA\, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:history,lecture,politics,social history
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/butler-1.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20120426T193000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20120426T210000
DTSTAMP:20260420T110431
CREATED:20161004T212858Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20171123T235621Z
UID:8324-1335468600-1335474000@irishliterarysociety.org
SUMMARY:Táin Bó Cuailnge - 26 Apr
DESCRIPTION:Táin Bó Cuailnge: Ireland’s National Epic? \nThis year’s Noel O’Connell lecture will address the literary and historical background of the Táin\, its transmission through the centuries\, the main characters and their roles in the tale\, and the possible messages it may have been intended to convey. \nTáin Bó Cuailnge\, is one of the most extensive tales to have been transmitted to us from the medieval Irish period and has long been accorded a special place in the literary tradition. The story depicts a pre-Christian warlike society in which bravery and honour are valued above almost all other attributes. Some would view it as a national epic\, akin to the Greek Iliad or the Latin Aeneid\, and indeed it has been argued that certain elements of the Táin were shaped under the influence of classical literature. Its origins can be traced back to the beginning of written literature in Irish and many would hold that it goes back further than even that. \nImage credit: brush drawing by Louis le Brocquy from The Tain\, as featured in translation by Thomas Kinsella. \nPresented in association with the Irish Texts Society:\n\n\n \nSpeaker:\n\nProfessor Ruairí Ó hUiginn\nÓ hUiginn received his secondary schooling at Coláiste Mhuire\, Parnell Square\, and then attended University College Dublin\, where he was awarded a BA and an MA in Celtic Studies. He has spent periods lecturing in Celtic Studies in Uppsala University (1978-80)\, at Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität\, Bonn (1981-5)\, and in Queens University Belfast (1985-1993). He spent the academic year 1980-1981 lecturing Modern Irish at University College Galway and in 1993 he was appointed as Professor of Modern Irish at St Patrick’s\, (NUI) Maynooth\, where he currently works. He is co-editor of Aspects of the Táin and of Ulidia: Proceedings of the International Conference on the Ulster Cycle.
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/tain-bo-cuailnge-26-apr/
LOCATION:The Doubletree by Hilton\, 2 Bridge Place\, Victoria\, London\, SWIV 1QA\, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:Collaboration,history,Irish language
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tain-slider.jpg
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END:VCALENDAR