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An important study of the paradoxes surrounding John McGahern's relationship with the Catholic Church.

"By the early 2000s, women in Ireland were arguably freer than any past generation to shape their sexual lives amidst the social freedoms of a globalised society. The Salley Gardens presents reflections from seventy-three heterosexual young women on growing up, forming sexual relationships and some becoming mothers in the last years of the 'Celtic Tiger'. The authors explore their hope and despair about what it means to be a woman, to use their agency, within the inescapable tensions of newly wealthy Ireland. Their efforts to build their sexual lives are complex and the significant problems they encountered remain unresolved. Women's search for agency is woven into our complex history and continues to reverberate. The bewildering juxtapositions young women faced fifteen years ago have intensified in the present. Then and now, we face conflicts with social expectations of our lives as sexual women, caring women, partners, wives, and mothers. Turning our older history in Ireland towards an exuberant resistance enables us to illuminate the limitations of the female identities imposed by contemporary Ireland. The Salley Gardens helps us rethink what we mean by agency and resistance, revaluing women's actions as we endeavour to value our own lives"--

Reinventing Ireland Through a French Prism explores concepts of Irish history, literature, culture and social development by subjecting them to a French perspective. Instead of using the monofocal lens that examines the effects of colonisation and postcolonialisation and Ireland's problematic relationship with Britain, this book analyses Ireland in the context of the role the country has played in the broader European context, with particular reference to France. The book contains contributions in English and French. Comme le dit Michel Déon dans sa Préface : « Ces deux pays, l'Irlande avec sa diaspora si puissante, la France avec l'étendue des territoires restés francophones, représentent dans le monde actuel deux havres de paix qui ne souffrent d'aucun malentendu historique et ne peuvent que s'enrichir en se parlant, en s'écrivant en s'écoutant. »

Catholicism has played a major role in Irish society for centuries. At times, it is perceived in a negative light, although there are positive aspects such as education and concern for the poor. This book examines how Ireland's writers have portrayed Catholicism's relationship with the country.

"This collection of essays discusses how the British empire resonates in a huge array of visual culture in Ireland from the late eighteenth century to the middle of the twentieth. The book is about the way empire has pervaded and continues to pervade Irish art and visual culture. The collection of essays expands the analysis of things visual in terms of Ireland and the British empire to include a broad range of cultural matter: art exhibitions, museums and their displays, architecture, photography, illustrated books, fashion, public and private performances and entertainments, as well as paintings, sculpture, prints and book illustration. The essays only touch on some of the issues that need to be discussed in relation to Ireland and the visual culture of imperialism, but it is hoped that this volume will spark others to investigate the topic and thus greatly expand Irish visual historiography"--

"This book, written by an insider, explores experiences over a 46-year career in five academic organisations in Ireland and the UK: moving from contract research assistant to full professor and line manager (Dean). Highlighting success and failure, strength and fragility, it challenges ideas about what it is to be a 'proper woman'. It describes the subtle and relentless processes of devaluation, marginalisation and disempowerment that are often 'normalised.' Written in a clear accessible style, with flashes of humour, it asks whose interests are served by taken-for-granted ideas about what it is to be a woman - ideas which deny the reality of many women's day-to-day experiences. Who wants us to think that all women find identity and satisfaction in housework and child care? Who wants us to think that universities are meritocratic institutions? The book will inspire and entertain all those who have struggled in any male dominated organisation and wondered if they were the problem"--

This book of essays will appeal to anyone interested in the dismantling of Ireland's cultural attachment to Catholicism over the past four decades.

Offre un panorama sur la littérature d'expression française du XXe siècle en montrant comment les questions relatives à la marginalité et à l'identité, qu'elles soient sociales, linguistiques, esthétiques ou autres, ont marqué des écrivains comme Huysmans, Beckett, Blanchot, François Mauriac, Julien Green, Duras, Didier Decoin, Yves Navarre, Maurice Pagnol, Nina Bouraoui, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Jovette Marchessault, Nicole Brossard, Jacques Ferron et Claire Bretécher....