"The collection stands as a valuable and much welcomed approach to the topic of unity, which deserves further study nowadays on an international scale."—Auxiliadora Pérez Vides, author of Only Them: Family and Feminism in the Contemporary Irish Novel
Description
The binary between a united Ireland and the current form of partition has provoked writers and scholars and established an important debate about what unity would look like. Discourses of Unity in Ireland and Europe charts and critically discusses the challenges of articulating unity while one-sided discourses—on either nationalist or unionist grounds—have gradually been integrating an Irish identity that finds itself between Britain and Europe.
Crucial to all of this is the role of writers in reimagining Irish writing before and after the Northern Ireland peace process and in reconstituting an idea of Irish unity in their works. Maurice Fitzpatrick, Christoph Reinfandt, and Raphael Zähringer bring together scholars from the fields of philosophy, political science, diplomacy, history, and literary and cultural studies to interpret how the concept of unity has manifested in literary, historical, and political texts. This wide-ranging approach considers a variety of economic perspectives, including how generations of economic shifts have impacted the image of Ireland’s relationship with the UK and Europe.
Ultimately, Discourses of Unity in Ireland and Europe provides coordinates for current debates about how to prepare for Irish unity and what shape it should or could take.
About the Author
Maurice Fitzpatrick is a lecturer, film director, author, and visiting scholar at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of The Boys of St. Columb’s and John Hume in America: From Derry to DC.
Christoph Reinfandt is professor of English literatures and cultures at the University of Tübingen. He is the author of Englische Romantik: Eine Einführung and Romantic Communication: On the Continuity of Romanticism in Modern Culture.
Raphael Zähringer is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Tübingen. He is the author of Hidden Topographies: Traces of Urban Reality in Dystopian Fiction.
May 2026