Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation

This book is essential to my dissertation topic and was suggested by my director. It provides specific as well as general information about major Irish writers of the 19th century. The first half of the book is very readable -- even entertaining -- the second half, not so much. Any student of Yeats, Wilde, or Synge should probably own a copy.

Declan Kiberd's is one of the few historioes of contemporary Irish literature which manages to do justice to the literature in Irish language, too. It is also a fascinating view on the development of the modern Irish nationalism and ideology. It is also brilliantly written. I have found it a treasure trove, also because it offers valuable analogies for a student of my own country's history. I sincerely hope you buy it, and read it, and re-read it. It is worth ten times what you pay for it.

This book offered me a lot on first reading, and even more upon re-reading. I'm sure I'll be going back again, as his ideas about not only Anglo-Irish literature, but the uses of history in constructing a present identity for Ireland really impressed me a great deal.My absolute favorite quote of 1998 appears on p. 293 "...History thereby becomes a form of science fiction: in order to get a fair hearing in a conservative society, the exponents of revolution had to present their intentions under the guise of a return to the idealized past..." If you're as confused as this Irish American was about how to make sense of the disparate Irish histories - you need this book!