= final examination topics: MA, English: Irish studies


For your final exam, you will be responsible for the 12 sub-topics in the topic group (I, II or III) most relevant to your thesis.
topics

== I. Political, social and ethnic history of Ireland

# The settlement of Ireland and conversion to Christianity
# Ireland in the Middle Ages: the Viking and Anglo-Norman conquests, consolidation of English dominance; the Pale
# Ireland under the Tudors
# From Cromwell to William III: victory and consolidation of the English state organisation and social structure; settlement of Ulster, the roots of the Protestant Ascendancy, the forced retreat of Irish-language Catholic culture
# "Georgian" Dublin in the eighteenth century; modern Anglo-Irish “national” politics at the end of the eighteenth century: Grattan's Parliament, the United Irishmen movement and The Year of the French
# From political union through Catholic emancipation to the Great Famine; the development of the new (Catholic and English speaking) Irish middle-class, the development of bourgeois mentality and the decline of the Irish language
# Isaac Butt, Daniel O’Connell, and Charles Stewart Parnell: the Land League, and the Home Rule movement
# The politics of independence and revolutionary violence: from the Fenians to the Easter Rising
# Arthur Griffith and Sinn Fein, independence and the partition of Ireland
# De Valera's Ireland: from the 1920s to the end of the 1960s
# Northern Ireland and “The Troubles”
# Ireland in the EU, “The Celtic Tiger”

 
== II. The Celtic heritage and the Anglo-Irish literary tradition

# Literature of the heroic age: epic cycles
# Irish culture in the early and mature Middle Ages: poetry, music, ornamental art
# Survival, then gradual decline of literature in the Irish language by the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century
# The beginnings of Anglo-Irish nationalism: Jonathan Swift
# Ireland and the Enlightenment: Jonathan Swift’s Gullivers’s Travels
# “We Irish”: George Berkeley, philosopher; The Language Issue: the rise of Hiberno-English
# Anglo-Irish dramatists and the English stage: Oliver Goldsmith and Richard Brinsley Sheridan
# Ireland and the French Revolution: Edmund Burke
# Maria Edgeworth, Ascendancy, and the culture of the Big House
# Nationalism and Romanticism: the poetry of Thomas Moore and James Clarence Mangan
# Repressed Ascendancy guilt: Anglo-Irish gothic in the 19th century (Charles Maturin, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, and Bram Stoker)
# Dracula and The Picture of Dorian Gray: decadence, transgression and the Irish


== III. Modernism and after


# The literary revival; Celtic Twilight, Douglas Hyde and the Gaelic League
# Irish dramatists and the London scene: Oscar Wilde and G. B. Shaw
# The new Irish drama; Yeats, Lady Gregory, J. M. Synge and the Abbey Theatre
# J. M. Synge and the modernist theatre
# W. B. Yeats's poetic career, significance and influence
# Ireland and modernism: James Joyce
# New trends in fiction between the two World Wars: sociographic-autobiographical populism (Thomas O'Crochan, Maurice O'Sullivan), late-naturalism (Liam O'Flaherty) and new experimentalism (Flann O'Brien/Myles na Copaleen and Samuel Beckett)
# Samuel Beckett, dramatist
# Modern Irish drama from the 20s to the present (Sean O'Casey, Dennis Johnston, Brendan Behan, Brian Friel, Thomas Murphy, Stewart Parker)
# The first generation of Irish poets after Yeats (Austin Clarke, Patrick Kavanagh)
# Irish poetry after World War II (John Montague, Thomas Kinsella, Brendan Kennelly, Derek Mahon, Seamus Heaney, Medbh McGuckian and others)
# The novel today (John McGahern, John Banville, Dermot Bolger, Colm Tóibín, Roddy Doyle and others)

== suggested reading

* Bew, Paul. Ireland: The Politics of Enmity 1789-2006, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
* Curtis, Edmund. A History of Ireland, London: Methuen, 1936 (And later editions)
* Foster, Roy F. Modern Ireland 1600-1972. (1988) London: Penguin Books, 1999. (several further reprints)
* Kiberd, Declan. Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation. London: Jonathan Cape, 1995. (several further editions)
* Kiberd, Declann. Irish Classics. London: Granta Books, 2000.
* Kurdi Mária (ed). Critical Anthology for the Study of Modern Irish Literature. Budapest: Nemzeti Tankönyvkiadó, 2003.
* Mc Cormack, W. J.. From Burke to Beckett: Ascendancy, Tradition and Betrayal in Literary History. Cork: Cork University Press, 1994.
* MacKillop, James. Myths and Legends of the Celts. London: Penguin Books, 2005. In Hungarian: MacKillop, James. Kelta mítoszok és legendák. Szieberth Ádám fordítása. Budapest: General Press Kiadó, 2006.
* Mesterházi Márton. Ír ember színpadon. Budapest: Liget Könyvek, 2006.