An Historical Examination of Irish Literature and Authors

About the Book

An Historical Examination of Irish Literature and Authors explores the extremely rich Irish literary tradition from the earliest times (over 6000 years ago) through the four Nobel Prize winners for Literature from the twentieth century. Topics discussed include the oral traditions and folktales of the Celtic/Gaelic peoples, gaelic literature, the fantastic illuminated manuscripts produced during the Christian monastic period, the literature of resistence against foreign oppression, the Irish literary revival at the turn of the twentieth century, and the great wealth of perhaps the most highly developed body of poetry on earth. The work includes forty biographical renderings discussing such authors as St. Patrick, Jonathan Swift, Oliver Goldsmith, Edmund Burke, Bram Stoker, Oscar Wilde, William Butler Yeats, James Joyce, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett, Seamus Heaney, and others.

About the Author

Dennis Sommers is a professor and historian, holding a doctorate degree in theology with a particular interest in Irish monastic history. He teaches Irish History and Literature in North Carolina and Florida and in the former Director of the Institute of Irish History and Culture?s International Summer School located at Trinity College, Dublin. He is also the author of A History of the Irish People: Presented In Ten Lectures, and The Broad River Monastery.