Woven Shades of Green: An Anthology of Irish Nature Literature

by Tim Wenzell (Editor)

Overview

Woven Shades of Green is an annotated selection of literature by authors who focus on the natural world and the beauty of Ireland. It begins with the Irish monks and their largely anonymous nature poetry, written at a time when Ireland was heavily forested. A section follows devoted to the changing Irish landscape, through both deforestation and famine, including the nature poetry of William Allingham, and James Clarence Mangan, essays from Thomas Gainford and William Thackerary, and novel excerpts from William Carleton and Emily Lawless. The anthology then turns to the nature literature of the Irish Literary Revival, including Yeats and Synge, and an excerpt from George Moore’s novel The Lake. Part four shifts to modern Irish nature poetry, beginning with Patrick Kavanaugh, and continuing with the poetry of Seamus Heaney, Eavan Boland, and others. Finally, the anthology concludes with a section on various Irish naturalist writers, and the unique prose and philosophical nature writing of John Moriarty, followed by a comprehensive list of environmental organizations in Ireland, which seek to preserve the natural beauty of this unique country.    

Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781684481392
Publisher:	Bucknell University Press
Publication date:	08/09/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	385
File size:	824 KB

About the Author

TIM WENZELL is an associate professor at Virginia Union University in Richmond, Virginia. He has published widely in all genres, including a novel, short stories, poetry, and ecocritical essays on both Irish and American literature, as well as the book Emerald Green: An Ecocritical Study of Irish Literature.

Table of Contents

 
Foreword by John Wilson Foster
Preface
 
Part I   Early Irish Nature Poetry
Introduction
The Mystery
Deer’s Cry
St. Columcille of Iona
Columcille Fecit
Caelius Sedulius
Invocation
Anonymous Early Irish Nature Poetry
The Blackbird by Belfast Lough
The Scribe
The White Lake
The Lark
The Hermit’s Song
King and Hermit
Song of the Sea
Summer Has Come
Song of Summer
Summer is Gone
A Song of Winter
Arran
Buile Suibhne
Part II  Nature Writing and the Changing Irish Landscape
Introduction
Thomas Gainsford
A Description of Ireland
William Allingham
Wishing
The Fairies
The Lover and Birds
Among the Heather
In a Spring Grove
The Ruined Chapel
William Hamilton Drummond
The Giant’s Causeway, Book First
James Clarence Mangan
The Dawning of the Day
The Fair Hills of Eire, O!
The Lovely Land: On a Landscape Painted by Maclise
William Makepeace Thackeray
From Irish Sketchbook
William Carleton
From The Black Prophet
Emily Lawless
From Hurrish: A Study
Part III Nature and the Irish Literary Revival
Introduction
Katharine Tynan
The Children of Lir
High Summer
Indian Summer
Nymphs
St. Francis to the Birds
The Birds’ Bargain
The Garden
The Wind that Shakes the Barley
AE (George Russell)
By the Margin of the Great Deep
Oversoul
The Great Breath
The Voice of the Waters
A New World
A Vision of Beauty
Carrowmore
Creation
The Winds of Angus
The Nuts of Knowledge
Children of Lir
Connla’s Well
From The Candle of Vision
William Butler Yeats
Coole Park, 1929
Coole Park and Ballylee, 1931
Who Goes with Fergus?
Down by the Salley Gardens
In the Seven Woods
The Shadowy Waters (Introductory Lines)
The Cat and the Moon
The Fairy Pedant
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
The Madness of King Goll
The Song of Wandering Aengus ...
The Stolen Child ...
The Two Trees ...
The White Birds ...
The Wild Swans at Coole ...
Eva Gore-Booth
The Dreamer ...
Re-Incarnation ...
Secret Waters ...
The Little Waves of Breffny
The Weaver
John Millington Synge
In Kerry
To the Oaks of Glencree
Prelude
In Glencullen
On an Island
From The Aran Islands
Riders to the Sea
George Moore
Preface and Chapter 1 from The Lake
Padraic Colum
A Drover
A Cradle Song
Across the Door
The Crane ...
Dublin Roads ..
River Mates ...
Part IV Modern Irish Nature Poetry
Introduction ...
Patrick Kavanaugh ..
Poplars
Lilacs in the City
October
Canal Bank Walk
Having to Live in the Country
Inniskeen Road: July Evening
On an Apple-Ripe September Morning
Primrose
Wet Evening in April
Louis MacNeice
The Sunlight on the Garden ..
Wolves ...
Tree Party
Seamus Heaney ..
Death of a Naturalist
The Salmon Fisher to the Fisherman
Limbo
St. Kevin and the Blackbird .
Eavan Boland
The Lost Land
The River
Mountain Time
This Moment
Ode to Suburbia
Escape ...
A Sparrow Hawk in the Suburbs
Moya Cannon
Bees under Snow
Eavesdropping
Two Ivory Swans
Winter View from Binn Briocain
Primavera
The Tube-Case Makers
Crannog
Hazelnuts
John Montague
All Legendary Obstacles
The Wild Dog Rose
The Trout
Michael Longley
The Osprey
Badger
Hedgehog
Kingfisher
Robin
Out of the Sea
Her Mime of the Lame Seagull
Carrigskeewaun
Saint Francis to the Birds
Derek Mahon
The Seasons
Achill
Aphrodite’s Pool
The Mayo Tao
Penhurst Place
The Woods
The Dream Play
“A Hermit”
Leaves
Sean Lysaght
Golden Eagle
The Clare Island Survey
Goldcrest
From Bird Sweeney
Desmond Egan
The Great Blasket
Sunday Evening
Meadowsweet
Snow Snow Snow Snow
A Pigeon Dead
Envoi
Mary O’Malley
Absent
The Man of Aran
Porpoises
The Price of Silk is Paid in Gold
The Storm
Liaden with a Mortgage Briefly Tastes the Stars
Rosemarie Rowley
Osborn O h - Aimbirgin; A Cry from the Heart of a Poet—Morning in Beara
The Blackbird of Derry of the Cairn
In Praise of the Hill Between of Howth
Blind Seamus McCourt: Welcome to the Bird’
Kitty Dwyer
Part V  The Literature of Irish Naturalists
Introduction
John Tyndall
Belfast Address
Robert Lloyd Praeger
From The Way That I Went
Michael Viney
From A Year’s Turning
From The Irish Times, “Another Life”
Tim Robinson
From Connemara: Listening to the Wind, “Preface”
From Connemara: Listening to the Wind, “The Boneyard”
John Moriarty
From Invoking Ireland
 
Appendix: Environmental Organizations in Ireland
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Index

 
 

Editorial Reviews

"Irish literature’s ubiquitous relationship to the environment offers a vast reservoir of meditations on humanity’s relationship with non-human natures. This can often prove daunting to both established scholars and novice readers. For all those who are interested in the intersectional concerns that arise from Irish literature’s evocations of the environment, Tim Wenzell’s timely anthology will prove to be especially invaluable. The book brings into sharp focus the unique ways in which Irish history merges with national and geopolitical ecologies, and how geographical questions are always conflated with geological ones.” 

Dr. Malcolm Sen

"Readers familiar with Irish literature and ecocriticism will find this volume filled with familiar faces and materials, as well as a few more obscure and exciting ones. This anthology offers scholars a series of substantial pieces from which to expand and further consider Irish nature writing and Irish approaches to the natural world."

Irish Studies Review

"Woven Shades of Green...shows the great variety and depth of editor Tim Wenzell’s knowledge and insight on the topic across history. He possesses a keen sense for choosing not only the key authors and texts, but also often underappreciated writers or lesser known works by famous ones."

James Joyce Literary Supplement

"A generous and inclusive anthology, focusing mainly on poetry but open also to significant pieces of prose....The engagement by these writers shows a valuable addition to the literature of the natural world."

New Hibernia Review

"This anthology emphasizes the importance of the natural world of Ireland and the breadth of writing that has embraced it during many centuries." 

Gale Literature Book Review Index

"Time has shaped a distinctive history of Irish nature literature in a deeply gathered, insightful anthology....Itself a generous treasury of Irish nature poetry and prose, the book is ordered by historical responses to religion, romanticism, colonisation, catastrophe, nationalism and material success."

Irish Times

"Wenzell's annotated selection is timely, looking as it does at a genre that doesn't seem to have bitten in Ireland quite as hard as it has in other publishing territories, a symptom perhaps of a more complicated - and at times harrowing - relationship with the natural world."

Sunday Independent

"The Best of the University Presses: 100 Books to Escape the News As Recommended by the UP Community" 
https://lithub.com/the-best-of-the-university-presses-a-reading-list/

LitHub