The Irish Identity: Independence, History, and Literature

Overview

Guided by great works from Yeats, Joyce, Lady Gregory, and others, discover the dazzling world of the Irish Renaissance—led by an award-winning professor.

Course No. 8740

Many political and cultural events sent shockwaves through the Irish world in the 19th and early 20th centuries as Ireland gradually shook off the shackles of British rule. Alongside a long and painful political process arose one of the greatest flourishings of literature in modern times. The Irish Revival that occurred around the turn of the 20th century fused and elevated aesthetic and civic ambitions, fueling a cultural climate of masterful artistic creation and resolute political self-determination reminiscent of the Italian Renaissance.

Delve into this remarkable period with The Irish Identity: Independence, History, and Literature. Over the course of 36 enthralling lectures, Professor Marc Conner of Washington and Lee University reveals the complex story of the Irish Renaissance through an exploration of its complex history and remarkable literature.

As nationalists including Charles Stewart Parnell, Patrick Pearse, and Michael Collins studied their political situation and sought a road to independence, writers such as W. B. Yeats, James Joyce, J. M. Synge, Lady Gregory, and many others took a close look at the emerging Irish identity and captured the spirit of the nation’s ongoing history in their works. The Irish Revival is a powerful, complex period, and this course brings this riveting history to life.

Video Lectures

1. Roots of Irish Identity: Celts to Monks (35 min)
2. Gaelic Ireland’s Fall: Vikings to Cromwell (34 min)
3. The Penal Laws and Protestant Ascendancy (31 min)
4. Ireland at the Turn of the 19th Century (31 min)
5. Daniel O’Connell and the Great Famine (32 min)
6. The Celtic Revival (31 min)
7. Shaw and Wilde: Irish Wit, London Stage (31 min)
8. W. B. Yeats and the Irish Renaissance (31 min)
9. Yeats in the 1890s (30 min)
10. Lady Gregory: The Woman behind the Revival (29 min)
11. J. M. Synge and the Aran Islands (32 min)
12. James Joyce: Emerging Genius of Dublin (31 min)
13. Joyce’s Dubliners: Anatomy of a City (30 min)
14. The Abbey Theatre (30 min)
15. Lady Gregory as the People’s Playwright (30 min)
16. Early Plays of J. M. Synge (30 min)
17. Synge’s Playboy of the Western World (30 min)
18. The Dublin Lockout and World War I (31 min)
19. The 1916 Easter Rising (31 min)
20. Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist (30 min)
21. Joyce’s Portrait as Modernist Narrative (30 min)
22. Yeats as the Great 20th-Century Poet (32 min)
23. Michael Collins and the War of Independence (31 min)
24. The Irish Civil War (31 min)
25. Ulysses: A Greek Epic in an Irish World (32 min)
26. Three Episodes from Ulysses (31 min)
27. Molly Bloom: Joyce’s Voice of Love (29 min)
28. Sean O’Casey’s Dublin Trilogy (30 min)
29. Life and Legacy of Lady Gregory (30 min)
30. Yeats: The Tower Poems and Beyond (33 min)
31. Blasket Island Storytellers (29 min)
32. Finnegans Wake: Joyce’s Final Epic (32 min)
33. Patrick Kavanagh: After the Renaissance (31 min)
34. Modern Ireland in Paint and Glass (31 min)
35. De Valera’s Ireland: The 1930s (33 min)
36. Seamus Heaney’s Poetry of Remembrance (37 min)