The selected essays of Sean O'Faolain / edited by Brad Kent.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

O'Faoláin, Seán, 1900-1991, author.

Contributor:

Kent, Brad, editor.

Standardized Title:

Essays. Selections

Language:

English

Genre:

Essays.

Physical Description:

xlii, 516 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Montreal ; Kingston ; London ; Chicago : McGill-Queen's University Press, [2016]

Summary:

"Sean O'Faolain (1900-1991) was one of the most important Irish writers in the first half of the twentieth century. He is most admired and best remembered for his 90 or so short stories, which first appeared in book form in 1932 and continued to do so until his Collected Stories were published in 1980. But he also wrote novels, biographies, travel, a memoir, and so on. O'Faolain joined the IRA as a young man and fought in the Irish War of Independence. By the 1930s his politics had altered. He lived for a time in both the United States and England before returning to Ireland (and eventually becoming director of the Irish Arts Council), and became known as an outspoken critic of the narrow conservatism and provincialism of Irish society. Especially important in this light are the years between 1940 and 1946, when he served as editor of The Bell, the most important cultural magazine in Dublin at the time."-- Provided by publisher.

"This book includes a generous selection of O'Faolain's essays, just over half of them written for The Bell, but also others that first appeared in a variety of magazines in the USA and the UK as well as Ireland. They span a period from 1928 to 1976. The state of Ireland--its politics, history, religion, censorship, languages, literature and culture--is a constant and predominant theme. But the book also includes essays on other topics, e.g. Charles Dickens, censorship in America, religious art, and the final "Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man." Brad Kent has added voluminous notes and an illuminating introduction that sets O'Faolain in the context, not only of Irish writers, but of public intellectuals in his time elsewhere."-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Essays: 1928-39

The Cruelty and Beauty of Words 3

Censorship in America 20

Celts and Irishmen 28

Literary Provincialism 33

The Modern Novel: A Catholic Point of View 37

Revamping Ireland 49

Roger Casement 54

Dickens and Thackeray 67

Daniel Corkery 76

The Dangers of Censorship 90

Don Quixote O'Flaherty 97

Æ and W.B. 105

Essays: 1940-45

This is Your Magazine 123

Jack B. Yeats 127

Frederick Robert Higgins (1896-1941) 131

Ah, Wisha! The Irish Novel 135

Standards and Taste 144

Ulster 150

Our Nasty Novelists 158

The Gaelic League 167

The Mart of Ideas 176

That Typical Irishman 180

The Senate and Censorship 186

Gaelic - The Truth 192

Ireland and the Modern World 197

On State Control 203

Books and a Live People 208

The Strange Case of Sean O'Casey 215

The Stuffed Shirts 225

Shadow and Substance 237

The Plain People of Ireland 244

The State and its Writers 250

The University Question 257

Toryism in Trinity 268

One World 281

The Pleasures and Pains of Ireland 290

The Gaelic Cult 300

Eamon de Valera 312

Romance and Realism 329

One World: An Irish Council 339

All Things Considered - 1 346

All Things Considered - 2 355

Essays: 1946-76

Shaw's Prefaces 365

Rebel by Vocation 372

On Translating from the Irish 388

The Dilemma of Irish Letters 391

Religious Art 405

Autoantiamericanism 409

The Death of Nationalism 422

The Dáil and the Bishops 432

On a Recent Incident at the International Affairs Association 441

The Irish and the Latins 452

Love Among the Irish 458

Fifty Years of Irish Writing 472

A Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man 488.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

O'Faoláin, Seán, 1900-1991. Essays. Selections. Selected essays of Sean O'Faolain.

ISBN:

9780773547766

0773547762

9780773547773

0773547770

OCLC:

948339384