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Ireland’s Others is a collection of essays by noted literary and cultural critic Elizabeth Butler Cullingford. In this volume, Cullingford assesses attempts by Irish writers to reverse hostile colonial stereotypes by creating analogies between their situations and those of other oppressed people. She analyzes the political costs and benefits of these analogies, and considers the plight of "others" within Ireland, including women, gays, travelers, and abused children.

Cullingford illuminates the connection between gender, sexuality, and national identity by comparing modern Irish literature with contemporary Irish and American popular culture. Exploring the work of Boucicault, Shaw, Friel, Jordan, McGuinness, and others, she considers the impact of globalization on Irish culture. ... Read more

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Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1740) is often regarded as the first true novel in English and a landmark in literary history. As the best selling novel of its time, it provoked a swarm of responses: panegyrics and critiques, parodies and burlesques, piracies and sequels, comedies and operas. The controversy it inspired has become a standard point of reference in studies of the rise of the novel, the history of the book and the emergence of consumer culture. In the first book-length study of the Pamela controversy since 1960, Thomas Keymer and Peter Sabor offer an original definitive account of the novel's enormous cultural impact. ... Read more

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Pamela's Back on the Market
Thomas Keymer and Peter Sabor's 2005 book surveying the reactions and criticisms that followed the 1740 publication of Samuel Richardson's Pamela revives forgotten satires, spoofs, continuations and critiques surrounding Richardson's first classic. While informative and engaging, the book is not an easy venture for a Pamela amateur and should be approached with caution by those unversed in Richardson's prose. Avoiding plot summary of both the original Pamela and its counterparts and offshoots, Pamela in the Marketplace instead chooses to focus on the atmosphere of the literary marketplace in the mid to late 18th century, skipping haphazardly from one writer to the next in search of the answer to an elusive question: What about Pamela made it such an unforgettable sensation?
The book avoids an overview of specific criticisms of Pamela, and instead uses the published counterfictions as examples of historical context. According to Keymer and Sabor, representations of Pamela (or her foil) in other works symbolize the charged literary air of the times, an era without copyright laws when Richardson competed with dozens of writers in declaring the legitimacy of his authorship of Pamela. Keymer and Sabor seem to view Pamela itself as essentially a literary starting point, calling the novel a "compelling prototype for the domestic, epistolary and psychological fiction of the decades to come" (4). The novel itself, they repeatedly assure their readers, was not particularly innovative in its character development, plot, or even title, but Richardson's unique ability to package his text attractively and market it well gives Pamela its rightful place as one of the greatest amatory novels of the 18th century.
Richardson's seizing on the success of Pamela as both a vogue and a controversy and his innate sense of marketing (garnishing attention from not only media outlets but also sermons and celebrity appearances) is Keymer and Sabor's tentative answer to the question of the novel's immediate and lasting success (25-27). Richardson, a well-known and successful printer in London's "Grub Street" marketplace, used his status as writer and publisher of Pamela for all it was worth. By agreeing to print several of his critics' pamphlets which harshly condemned Pamela and by allegedly writing criticism of his own novel in order to boost publishing sales, Richardson not only profiting from others' criticism but also that which he created himself. Richardson epitomized the 18th century literary view of publishing as a career versus an outlet for creative expression (5). Writers wrote for money, and Richardson as well as others who benefited from Pamela's narrative appeal exploited their public's insatiable eagerness for cheap, entertaining fiction. Keymer and Sabor spend the most time on the major Pamela offshoots, including Henry Fielding's Shamela, Eliza Haywood's Anti-Pamela and John Kelly's Pamela's Conduct in High Life and examine as well an anonymous Irish precursor to Pamela written in 1693 entitled Vertue Rewarded; or, the Irish Princess.
Dozens of authors, playwrights, pamphleteers, publishers, editors, poets and opera composers are mentioned throughout Pamela in the Marketplace, and a hefty portion of the book is devoted to their biography and publication history. While these writers certainly do emphasize Keymer and Sabor's point that Pamela served as inspiration for more publications than Richardson could handle, the overall purpose of the extended portraits seems lost since they appear wedged between chapters on contextual and historical significance. Yet the evidence speaks for itself: Pamela was more than a novel, it was a product. Pamela's fame cannot be defined solely in terms of book sales (which expanded beyond Richardson's belief after gaining international success in France as well as Ireland), since the novel's influence extended to the furthest reactions of the artistic sphere. As the inspiration for plays, ballad operas, paintings, engraved illustrations, fans and wax figures, Pamela the woman became a commercial legend rather than a literary heroine.
However, besides endlessly expanding the various reasons and evidence for Pamela's lasting fame, Keymer and Sabor fail to outline clearly their purpose for writing. The book would doubtlessly be useful to any Richardsonian scholar or avid literary critic, but more plebeian audiences might feel left without a real sense of why this book would logically follow an academic or leisure reading of Pamela. As an inexperienced scholar, reading Pamela in the Marketplace left me with, if nothing else, a sense of the cutthroat publishing competition that surrounded London's "Grub Street" of the mid 1700's and a taste of the prolific publication and consumption that would follow such a landmark text as Pamela.
Pamela in the Marketplace is written in a succinct and concise style, which accounts for the inclusion of so many people, novels and reactions in a book of little over 200 pages. References and comparisons are explained and detailed for effective comprehension, and though informatively dense, the book feels whole and connected. I cannot help but add, however, that one need read Pamela in the Marketplace with a French dictionary at your side: a noticeable number of French passages and quotations are provided without translation. While I might have been able to overlook a few, the frequency of un-translated French sections not only impeded my understanding, but also imparted a sense of what I am sure was unintentional authorial superiority and condescension. The bulk of these passages made translation difficult, and with introductions that emphasize the importance and distinctness of the included French quotations, I was baffled at the lack of translation. (For example, see page 87.)
As a whole, Keymer and Sabor's Pamela in the Marketplace accomplishes its goal of setting the stage of the literary marketplace and diving into the reasons why Pamela made such a lasting mark in the field of literary criticism as an "early agent in the emergence of a critical public sphere" (48). Despite its unsettling structure of biographical and historical detours, the book is both an interesting and entertaining look at the nature of publication and the overwhelming responses, both positive and negative, that followed Richardson's 1740 publication of Pamela. I would recommend the book to fans of publication history and to those in search of a compilation of the literary offspring of Pamela. I would, however, warn those unfamiliar with Pamela and/or uninterested in satirical counterfictions to the novel not to expect Keymer and Sabor's book to satiate their desire for a close, critical reading of Pamela itself. ... Read more

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From cartoons of Muhammad in a Danish newspaper to displays of the Confederate battle flag over the South Carolina statehouse, acts of cultural significance have set off political conflicts and sometimes violence. These and other expressions and enactments of culture—whether in music, graffiti, sculpture, flag displays, parades, religious rituals, or film—regularly produce divisive and sometimes prolonged disputes. What is striking about so many of these conflicts is their emotional intensity, despite the fact that in many cases what is at stake is often of little material value. Why do people invest so much emotional energy and resources in such conflicts? What is at stake, and what does winning or losing represent? The answers to these questions explored in Culture and Belonging in Divided Societies view cultural expressions variously as barriers to, or opportunities for, inclusion in a divided society's symbolic landscape and political life.

Though little may be at stake materially, deep emotional investment in conflicts over cultural acts can have significant political consequences. At the same time, while cultural issues often exacerbate conflict, new or redefined cultural expressions and enactments can redirect long-standing conflicts in more constructive directions and promote reconciliation in ways that lead to or reinforce formal peace agreements. Encompassing work by a diverse group of scholars of American studies, anthropology, art history, religion, political science, and other fields, Culture and Belonging in Divided Societies addresses the power of cultural expressions and enactments in highly charged settings, exploring when and how changes in a society's symbolic landscape occur and what this tells us about political life in the societies in which they take place.

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Richard Tillinghast, a celebrated American poet and critic, lived for a year in Ireland in the early 1990s and then returned each year until he became a resident in 2005. From an insider/outsider perspective, he writes vividly and evocatively about the land and people of his adopted home, its culture, its literature, and its long, complex history.
Tillinghast orients the reader to Ireland as it is today. Following its entry into the European Union, Ireland changed radically from an impoverished, provincial, former British colony to a country where a farmer takes his wife on skiing holidays in Switzerland and is proud of his wine cellar, to one now home to immigrants from Europe, Africa, and Asia. For many Americans--Irish Americans in particular--Ireland is a mythic and timeless land; from his unique vantage point, Tillinghast debunks a good many stereotypes that prevent our seeing Ireland for what it was, as well as what it has become.
Most of Finding Ireland is devoted to thoughtful readings of the works of Irish writers and playwrights, including W. B. Yeats, Seamus Heaney, Oscar Wilde, and Brian Friel, as well as lesser-known names that deserve a wider readership. Tillinghast also considers the significant contributions of Anglo-Irish authors--John Millington Synge, Elizabeth Bowen, George Moore, Violet Martin and Edith Somerville, William Trevor, and Derek Mahon--with excursions into Irish architecture, music, and garden design.
In contemporary Ireland, Tillinghast finds a dynamic society that has stepped out of the shadows of its troubled past to embrace an inclusive, outward-looking interpretation of its history. Intimate in tone, entertaining, and always accessible, Finding Ireland captures an expatriate's enthusiasm for his new country and its evolving identity. ... Read more

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A must for anyone who wants to learn about the home of Saint Patrick
In takes a certain adoration to embrace a new country as home. "Finding Ireland: A Poet's Explorations of Irish Literature and Culture" is a book that combines poetry and memoir as author Richard Tillinghast describes his adoption of Ireland as his new home after living in the United Stated for most of his life. He describes his new home and why he loves it, in a manner sure to inspire an appreciation for Irish heritage and culture in readers. "Finding Ireland" is a must for anyone who wants to learn about the home of Saint Patrick.
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Remembering the Year of the French is a model of historical achievement, moving deftly between the study of historical events—the failed French invasion of the West of Ireland in 1798—and folkloric representations of those events. Delving into the folk history found in Ireland’s archives and rich oral traditions, Guy Beiner reveals alternate visions of the Irish past and brings into focus the vernacular histories, folk commemorative practices, and negotiations of memory that had gone largely unnoticed by historians. Though his focus is 1798, his work is also a comprehensive study of Irish folk history and of grassroots social memory. ... Read more

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"The European Culture Wars in Ireland" tells the story of Father Robert O'Keeffe of Callan, County Kilkenny, and his conflict with ecclesiastical authority. O'Keeffe's serial lawsuits against his own curates, his bishop, and the cardinal archbishop of Dublin, and his consequent removal as manager of a number of national schools and chaplain of the local workhouse, commanded attention across Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the world. In Callan, the town split into warring camps, and riot became a part of life for nearly ten years - the colourful local details eventually inspired two novelists. To contemporaries, Callan and O'Keeffe mattered because they seemed to be an Irish manifestation of a global Catholic-secular culture war that encompassed both the definition of papal infallibility and the German Kulturkampf. For a time, the Callan Schools dominated British political debate, and O'Keeffe secured a private meeting with Prime Minister William Gladstone. Political fury at his removal from publicly funded positions at the behest of clerical authority nearly wrecked the Irish system of national education. In May 1873, the libel trial O'Keeffe v.Cullen saw the competing claims of canon and civil law tested in spectacularly public fashion as the island's first Roman Catholic cardinal was tried before the Queen's Bench. "The European Culture Wars in Ireland" traces the Callan Schools Affair from its origins in 1868 to O'Keeffe's death in 1881. It examines not only the riotous local events and the spectacular libel trial in Dublin, but also the complex and politically charged response of the British state. A new departure in Irish historiography, the book argues that Robert O'Keeffe and his grievances could only become both cause celebre and constitutional crisis because the United Kingdom as a whole was an integral part of Europe, responsive to and influenced by continental concerns. ... Read more

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Through an exploration of overlapping concepts of noble honour amongst English and Irish elites, this book provides a cultural analysis of 'British' high politics in the early modern period. Analysing English- and Irish-language sources, Brendan Kane argues that between the establishment of the Irish kingdom under the English Crown in 1541 and the Irish rebellion of 1641, honour played a powerful role in determining the character of Anglo-Irish society, politics and cultural contact. In this age, before the rise of a more bureaucratic and participatory state, political power was intensely personal and largely the concern of elites. And those elites were preoccupied with honour. By exploring contemporary 'honour politics', this book brings a cultural perspective to our understanding of the character of English imperialism in Ireland and of the Irish responses to it. In so doing it highlights understudied aspects of the origins of the 'British' state. ... Read more

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The encroachment of globalization and demands for greater regional autonomy have had a profound effect on the way we picture Ireland. This challenging new look at the key issue of sovereignty asks us how we should think about the identity of a "postnationalist" Ireland. Richard Kearney goes to the heart of the conflict over demand for communal identity, traditionally expressed by nationalism, and the demand for a universal model of citizenship, traditionally expressed by republicanism.

In so doing, he asks us to question whether the sacrosanct concept of absolute national sovereignty is becoming a luxury ill afforded in the emerging new Europe. Kearney then takes us beyond the political with chapters on the influence of philosophers such as George Berkeley, John Toland and John Tyndall, and looks at some of the myths in Irish poetry and nationhood.

Postnationalist Ireland provides a recasting of contemporary Irish politics, culture, literature and philosophy and will appeal to students of these subjects and Irish studies in general. ... Read more

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It is good book for people to study saint patrick.
If you want to know about the ireland context in the Saint Patrick's age you can buy this book. It is very good.

A treasure trove of materials.
This is a collection of translations of the writings of St. Patrick, hiscontemporaries, and heirs, with expert commentary by De Paor. He beginswith an introduction to European Christianity at the time of St. Patrick.Included in the documents are the accounts of various councils and synodsconnected to the evangelization of Ireland, the writings of St. Patrickhimself, and the annals, letters, and lives written by and of St. Patrick'sfollowers. This is a treasure trove of materials for research into the lifeof St. Patrick. ... Read more

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Celts and Christians provides new approaches to the texts of the Celtic world which do justice to their uniqueness as well as placing them in their theological and historical contexts. It will appeal to all those interested in Celtic Christianity, Celtic Studies and early medieval literature and history. ... Read more