New Hibernia Review’s winter issue now available online
New Hibernia Review, the quarterly journal published by the University of St. Thomas Center for Irish Studies, is available online.
The journal’s most recent issue (Autumn 2007, Vol. 11, No. 4) can be found at the Project Muse Web site. All issues of New Hibernia Review since 2000 are available on the Project Muse site, which offers searchable, full-text issues of the St. Thomas-based journal.
The newest issue was mailed to subscribers on Dec. 19, 2007. It will be formally introduced to the St Thomas community and other friends at a reception from 3 to 4 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 9, in the O’Shaughnessy Room (LIB 108) in O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library Center.
A short program at 3:30 p.m. will discuss the issue and its particular features of interest. Light refreshments will be served. All are welcome; no reservation is needed.
Here’s a brief look at the contents of the most recent issue:
- The issue opens with a memoir by Christine Cusick of Seton Hill College that tells of transformative trip when, following the death of her mother, Cusick traveled with her father and other members of her family to Ireland. In her grandfather’s home town, the family felt the beginnings of healing.
- Next, Caleb Richardson of the University of New Mexico describes the transformation that the editor of genius R.M. Smyllie worked on the Irish Times in the 1930s and 1940s, turning it into a force in the national life. Smyllie undertook this effort with panache, an eye for journalistic talent, political courage and sometimes heroic eccentricity.
- Then, poet John McAulliffe, born in County Kerry and teaching in England, offers a suite of new poems that probe Ireland’s contemporary tensions between motion, dislocation and place.
- One of the titans of Irish studies in America, James Donnelly Jr. of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, then examines the violent waves of Irish agrarian rebellion in the late 18th and early 19th centuries -- especially the followers of “Captain Rock,” a mythical figure in the upheavals of 1821-1824.
- From Notre Dame, Abigail Palko looks at the short stories of Irish-born Maeve Brennan (1917-1993) in the New Yorker of the 1950s. Brennan resurrected the figure of the Irish maid -- by then a fixture in American life and letters for more than a century -- to skewer the pretensions of upperclass readers
- Next, Dr. Erik Martiny of France’s Universite de Aix-en-Provence, considers the witty poetry of Dubliner, and especially its frequent reference to writerly precursors -- to the point where such figures appear to serve as substitute father figures.
- The art historian John Turpin of the National College of Art and Design then examines Irish monuments, north and south, erected to the memory of those who died in World War I. In the Irish Free State, and later the Republic, these memorials reflect a strong ambiguity toward Irish service in the British forces.
- Next, three short essays marking the centennial of John Synge’s The Aran Islands comprise a “Radharc ar gCúl / Backward Glance” feature. From Canada, Ann Saddlemyer – Synge’s biographer and editor – looks at how Synge’s first book foreshadows the qualities and themes of his much-better-known later plays. Then, the anthropologist Veerendra Lele of Denison University offers a present-day ethnographer’s response to Synge’s account of time among the islanders – particularly his approach to the Irish language. Rounding out the section, Shawn Gillen of Beloit College appreciates The Aran Islands as a charter document in an evolving tradition of creative nonfiction in Ireland and elsewhere. Synge the stylist seems oddly familiar to present-day readers.
- Finally, Julie Henigan of the University of Notre Dame (who is a skilled folk musician in addition to being a scholar of Irish literature) looks at the crucial traditional ballad that is central to James Joyce’s short story masterpiece, “The Dead.”
For more information, including subscription information, contact the Center for Irish Studies, (651) 962-5662, or Mail #5008, or e-mail Jim Rogers. Visit the center's Web site for additional information.
