The Selected Essays of Sean O'Faolain
Sean O’Faolain (1900-1991) was Ireland’s leading social and political critic in the period following the country’s independence from the United Kingdom. Since his death, scholarly opinion has alternately cast him as an arch-revisionist, a liberal nationalist, and a frustrated republican. The Selected Essays of Sean O’Faolain reassesses his reputation by showing that he wrote in the tradition of post-Enlightenment European intellectuals, and that while he was a significant figure in Ireland, his work extends beyond immediate national concerns. This volume includes over fifty unabridged essays by O’Faolain on a wide range of subjects – from canonical writers to architecture, from religious scandals to economics, from nationalism to internationalism, from long-dead historical figures to recent controversies. O’Faolain’s fearlessness in taking on the major political, cultural, and religious figures of his day, his masterly use of rhetoric, and his intellectual acuity have contributed to his works being quoted often by scholars working across several disciplines. Many of these essays appear here in print for the first time since they were published in the foremost periodicals of their day. An extensive introduction and helpful annotations contextualise and explain them for a new audience. In his re-readings of history and challenges to dominant historiographical trends, O’Faolain has become a pariah to some and a hero to others. The Selected Essays of Sean O’Faolain bridges some of these competing visions, presenting a more complex figure through his varied corpus of writing.
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The Selected Essays of Sean O'Faolain
Sean O’Faolain (1900-1991) was Ireland’s leading social and political critic in the period following the country’s independence from the United Kingdom. Since his death, scholarly opinion has alternately cast him as an arch-revisionist, a liberal nationalist, and a frustrated republican. The Selected Essays of Sean O’Faolain reassesses his reputation by showing that he wrote in the tradition of post-Enlightenment European intellectuals, and that while he was a significant figure in Ireland, his work extends beyond immediate national concerns. This volume includes over fifty unabridged essays by O’Faolain on a wide range of subjects – from canonical writers to architecture, from religious scandals to economics, from nationalism to internationalism, from long-dead historical figures to recent controversies. O’Faolain’s fearlessness in taking on the major political, cultural, and religious figures of his day, his masterly use of rhetoric, and his intellectual acuity have contributed to his works being quoted often by scholars working across several disciplines. Many of these essays appear here in print for the first time since they were published in the foremost periodicals of their day. An extensive introduction and helpful annotations contextualise and explain them for a new audience. In his re-readings of history and challenges to dominant historiographical trends, O’Faolain has become a pariah to some and a hero to others. The Selected Essays of Sean O’Faolain bridges some of these competing visions, presenting a more complex figure through his varied corpus of writing.
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The Selected Essays of Sean O'Faolain

The Selected Essays of Sean O'Faolain

The Selected Essays of Sean O'Faolain

The Selected Essays of Sean O'Faolain

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Overview

Sean O’Faolain (1900-1991) was Ireland’s leading social and political critic in the period following the country’s independence from the United Kingdom. Since his death, scholarly opinion has alternately cast him as an arch-revisionist, a liberal nationalist, and a frustrated republican. The Selected Essays of Sean O’Faolain reassesses his reputation by showing that he wrote in the tradition of post-Enlightenment European intellectuals, and that while he was a significant figure in Ireland, his work extends beyond immediate national concerns. This volume includes over fifty unabridged essays by O’Faolain on a wide range of subjects – from canonical writers to architecture, from religious scandals to economics, from nationalism to internationalism, from long-dead historical figures to recent controversies. O’Faolain’s fearlessness in taking on the major political, cultural, and religious figures of his day, his masterly use of rhetoric, and his intellectual acuity have contributed to his works being quoted often by scholars working across several disciplines. Many of these essays appear here in print for the first time since they were published in the foremost periodicals of their day. An extensive introduction and helpful annotations contextualise and explain them for a new audience. In his re-readings of history and challenges to dominant historiographical trends, O’Faolain has become a pariah to some and a hero to others. The Selected Essays of Sean O’Faolain bridges some of these competing visions, presenting a more complex figure through his varied corpus of writing.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780773547773
Publisher: McGill-Queens University Press
Publication date: 11/10/2016
Edition description: New Edition
Pages: 540
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 8.80(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Brad Kent is associate professor of British and Irish literatures at Université Laval.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: On Polemical Essays and the Public Intellectual xi

Editorial Practice xxxvii

Suggested Thematic Groupings xli

Essays: 1928-39

The Cruelty and Beauty of Words 3

Censorship in America 20

Celts and Irishmen 28

Literary Provincialism 33

The Modern Novel: A Catholic Point of View 37

Revamping Ireland 49

Roger Casement 54

Dickens and Thackeray 67

Daniel Corkery 76

The Dangers of Censorship 90

Don Quixote O'Flaherty 97

æ and W.B. 105

Essays: 1940-45

This is Your Magazine 123

Jack B. Yeats 127

Frederick Robert Higgins (1896-1941) 131

Ah, Wisha! The Irish Novel 135

Standards and Taste 144

Ulster 150

Our Nasty Novelists 158

The Gaelic League 167

The Mart of Ideas 176

That Typical Irishman 180

The Senate and Censorship 186

Gaelic - The Truth 192

Ireland and the Modern World 197

On State Control 203

Books and a Live People 208

The Strange Case of Sean O'Casey 215

The Stuffed Shirts 225

Shadow and Substance 237

The Plain People of Ireland 244

The State and its Writers 250

The University Question 257

Toryism in Trinity 268

One World 281

The Pleasures and Pains of Ireland 290

The Gaelic Cult 300

Eamon de Valera 312

Romance and Realism 329

One World: An Irish Council 339

All Things Considered - 1 346

All Things Considered - 2 355

Essays: 1946-76

Shaw's Prefaces 365

Rebel by Vocation 372

On Translating from the Irish 388

The Dilemma of Irish Letters 391

Religious Art 405

Autoantiamericanism 409

The Death of Nationalism 422

The Dáil and the Bishops 432

On a Recent Incident at the International Affairs Association 441

The Irish and the Latins 452

Love Among the Irish 458

Fifty Years of Irish Writing 472

A Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man 488

Index 499

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