Irish literature
Máiréad Ní Ghráda wrote numerous successful plays often influenced by Bertolt Brecht, as well as the first translation of Peter Pan, Tír na Deo, and Manannán, the first Irish language Science fiction book.
Most attention has been given to Irish writers who wrote in English and who were at the forefront of the modernist movement, notably James Joyce, whose novel Ulysses is considered one of the most influential works of the century.
Other notable Irish writers from the twentieth century include poets Eavan Boland and Patrick Kavanagh, dramatists Tom Murphy and Brian Friel, and novelists Edna O'Brien and John McGahern.
In the late twentieth century, Irish poets, especially those from Northern Ireland, came to prominence including Derek Mahon, Medbh McGuckian, John Montague, Seamus Heaney and Paul Muldoon.
Well-known Irish writers in English in the twenty-first century include Edna O'Brien, Colum McCann, Anne Enright, Roddy Doyle, Moya Cannon, Sebastian Barry, Colm Toibín, and John Banville, all of whom have all won major awards.
Younger writers include Sinéad Gleeson, Paul Murray, Anna Burns, Billy O'Callaghan, Kevin Barry, Emma Donoghue, Donal Ryan, Sally Rooney, William Wall, Marina Carr, and Martin McDonagh.
The earliest poetry, composed in the 6th century, illustrates a vivid religious faith or describes the world of nature, and was sometimes written in the margins of illuminated manuscripts.
[9] The Book of Armagh is a 9th-century illuminated manuscript written mainly in Latin, containing early texts relating to St Patrick and some of the oldest surviving specimens of Old Irish.
Much of the writing produced in this period was conventional in character, in praise of patrons and their families, but the best of it was of exceptionally high quality and included poetry of a personal nature.
[21] Other recurring characters include Cú Chulainn, a figure comparable to the Greek hero Achilles, known for his terrifying battle frenzy, or ríastrad,[22] Fergus and Conall Cernach.
Early Irish writers though of tales in terms of genre's such as Aided (Death-tales), Aislinge (Visions), Cath (Battle-tales), Echtra (Adventures), Immram (Voyages), Táin Bó (Cattle Raids), Tochmarc (Wooings) and Togail (Destructions).
[28] This was an age of social and political tension, as expressed by the poet Dáibhí Ó Bruadair and the anonymous authors of Pairliment Chloinne Tomáis, a prose satire on the aspirations of the lower classes.
The most famous of these is Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire, composed in the late 18th century by Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, one of the last of the Gaelic gentry of West Kerry.
A famous long poem from the beginning of the century is Cúirt an Mheán Oíche (The Midnight Court), a vigorous and inventive satire by Brian Merriman from County Clare.
One such collection was in the possession of Amhlaoibh Ó Súilleabháin, a teacher and linen draper of County Kilkenny who kept a unique diary in vernacular Irish from 1827 to 1835 covering local and international events, with a wealth of information about daily life.
In Ulster Scots-speaking areas there was traditionally a considerable demand for the work of Scottish poets, such as Allan Ramsay and Robert Burns, often in locally printed editions.
[46] James Fenton's poetry, at times lively, contented, wistful, is written in contemporary Ulster Scots,[40] mostly using a blank verse form, but also occasionally the Habbie stanza.
The most significant of the second generation Modernist Irish poets who first published in the 1920s and 1930s include Brian Coffey (1905–1995), Denis Devlin (1908–1959), Thomas MacGreevy (1893–1967), Blanaid Salkeld (1880–1959), and Mary Devenport O'Neill (1879–1967).
[58] A new generation of poets emerged from the late 1950s onward, which included Anthony Cronin, Pearse Hutchinson, John Jordan, and Thomas Kinsella, most of whom were based in Dublin in the 1960s and 1970s.
Reid's fiction, which often uses submerged narratives to explore male beauty and love, can be placed within the historical context of the emergence of a more explicit expression of homosexuality in English literature in the 20th century.
[61] If Ulysses is the story of a day, Finnegans Wake is a night epic, partaking in the logic of dreams and written in an invented language which parodies English, Irish and Latin.
[62] Joyce's high modernist style had its influence on coming generations of Irish novelists, most notably Samuel Beckett (1906–1989), Brian O'Nolan (1911–66) (who published as Flann O'Brien and as Myles na gCopaleen), and Aidan Higgins (1927–2015).
O'Nolan was bilingual and his fiction clearly shows the mark of the native tradition, particularly in the imaginative quality of his storytelling and the biting edge of his satire in works such as An Béal Bocht.
Other notable novelists of the late 20th and early 21st century include John Banville, Sebastian Barry, Seamus Deane, Dermot Healy, Jennifer Johnston, Patrick McCabe, Edna O'Brien, Colm Tóibín, and William Trevor.
The Irish short story has proved a popular genre, with well-known practitioners including Frank O'Connor, Seán Ó Faoláin, and William Trevor.
He was part of the generation of "thirties poets" that included W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis, nicknamed "MacSpaunday" as a group – a name invented by Roy Campbell, in his Talking Bronco (1946).
Bernard MacLaverty, from Belfast, has written the novels Cal; Lamb (1983), which describes the experiences of a young Irish Catholic involved with the IRA; Grace Notes, which was shortlisted for the 1997 Booker Prize, and The Anatomy School.
George Bernard Shaw turned the Edwardian theatre into an arena for debate about important political and social issues, like marriage, class, "the morality of armaments and war" and the rights of women.
These included Denis Johnston (1901–84), Samuel Beckett (1906–89), Brendan Behan (1923–64), Hugh Leonard (1926–2009), John B. Keane (1928–2002), Brian Friel (1929–2015), Thomas Kilroy (1934– ), Tom Murphy (1935–2018), and Frank McGuinness (1953– ).
It was well received; however, it was the 1956 production at Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop in Stratford, London, that gained Behan a wider reputation – this was helped by a famous drunken interview on BBC television.
