Modern Irish Literature: Sources and Founders

by Vivian Mercier, Eilís Dillon (Editor)

Modern Irish Literature marks the culmination of the lifetime interest of the distinguished scholar Vivian Mercier (1919-89) in the influence of Gaelic literature on modern Irish writing. Building on the insights developed in his classic The Irish Comic Tradition , Mercier's focus here is on the research of nineteenth-century scholars which gave rise to the revival of Irish literature in English. Separate chapters analyzing the work of writers including Bernard Shaw, Yeats, Synge, Joyce, and Beckett build to provide a fresh and timely picture of Irish literary tradition. Informed by a wealth and diversity of scholarship, and written in a highly accessible style, this book is a major contribution to the study of Irish literature.

398 pages, Hardcover

First published June 16, 1994

About the author

Vivian Mercier (1919–1989) was an Irish literary critic. He was born in Clara, County Offaly, Ireland and educated first at Portora Royal School, Enniskillen, Co. Fermanagh, and then at Trinity College, Dublin. After taking his doctorate at Trinity, he taught in American universities from the 1940s to the 1980s; his last post was Professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is perhaps best known for his famous summation of the plot of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot: "... has achieved a theoretical impossibility—a play in which nothing happens, that yet keeps audiences glued to their seats. What's more, since the second act is a subtly different reprise of the first, he has written a play in which nothing happens, twice." (Irish Times, 18 February 1956, p. 6.). Despite what may sound like a somewhat disparaging criticism, Mercier was one of the foremost Beckett scholars of his day, and wrote extensively about Godot. He also wrote a critically acclaimed study of Beckett's work as a whole, Beckett/Beckett.

1989, the year of his death, was also the year of Beckett's death. Mercier's last marriage (1974-1989) had been to the Irish novelist and children's writer Eilis Dillon, who edited his posthumous book, Modern Irish Literature: Sources and Founders (Oxford, 1994). He is buried beside his wife in his hometown of Clara.

Reviews

[The Half-blood Reader]

College reads: I only read chapters/sections relevant to my studies, hence the dnf ( 6. W. B. Yeats: Master Craftsman)