"This collection of essays stands as a model of the genre. What is so impressive about this volume is its clear focus: both its focus on a specific type of memory discourse—trauma—and its focus on two distinctive historical events or clusters or, as its author calls them, 'memory cruxes.'"—Michael Mays, author of Nation States: The Cultures of Irish Nationalism
"The essays here focus on theoretical issues such as the distinction between memory and history and the expression of memories of Ireland's past at various points from the chronicles of the early modern period through the impact of multiculturalism on Irish national memory today. . . . Highly recommended."—Choice
Description
Recent years have seen cultural memory become a significant element in area studies and the humanities. Ireland, with its trauma-filled history and huge global diaspora, presents a fascinating subject for work in this vein. This series as a whole seeks to construct a landscape of cultural memory in Ireland, looking to map—through an examination of various historical moments, spaces, and cultural forms—the ways in which cultural memory shifts over time.
Volume 3 focuses on the impact of trauma on cultural memory by considering two cruxes, the Famine and the Troubles, as formative to the study of Irish cultural memory. Topics include hunger strikes, monuments to the Famine, trauma and the politics of memory in the Irish peace process, and Ulster Loyalist battles in the twenty-first century. Gathering the work of leading scholars such as Graham Dawson, Richard Kearney, Margaret Kelleher, David Lloyd, and Joseph Valente, this collection is an essential contribution to the field of Irish studies.
About the Author
Oona Frawley is a lecturer in English at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. She is the editor of several studies of Irish literature and the author of Irish Pastoral: Nostalgia in Twentieth-Century Irish Literature and Flight.
