Irish Classics

In these 35 exciting essays, Kiberd (Inventing Ireland; etc.), professor of Anglo-Irish Literature at University College, Dublin, covers just about every aspect of Irish literature, its writers and the times in which they lived. Beginning with young Gaelic Ireland, Kiberd rapidly advances straight to Jonathan Swift and Richard Brinsley Sheridan. But the meat of the book starts with the political stirrings of the late 18th century. In the Journal of Wolfe Tone Kiberd exposes the rakish personality behind the rather saintly legend that textbooks have applied to one of the most prominent revolutionaries of 1798. Advancing to the late 19th century, the author notes that Oscar Wilde was the antithesis of John Millington Synge. While Synge studied the Irish poor, Wilde, conversely and perversely, studied the British upper class. Kiberd sees Joyce's Ulysses ""as a slow-motion alternative to the daily newspaper of Dublin for 16 June 1904."" He sees it as a means for Joyce to trumpet the common man, and also as a way to deflate his hubris. Sean O'Casey and Liam O'Flaherty are coupled as postrevolutionary writers. O'Casey's plays, such as Juno and the Paycock, are an attempt to tackle an ""outbreak of middle-class morality,"" and O'Flaherty's The Informer is an ""attempt to wrest the meaning and interpretation of the Jesus story from the priests."" The essay on Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds recalls the common joke of mid-20th-century Ireland: ""I'm in a terrible state I'm in the Free State!,"" allowing O'Brien to contrast masturbation with something much worse literary production. There are also essays on Synge, Yeats, Shaw and more. This rich stew is filled with new insights and interpretations, with something for everyone. (Mar.)