Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
"Knowledgeable, informative, and a great pleasure to read."--Choice
"A fine monument to a splendid man [Mercier]."--The Sunday Times
"What one gets [with Mercier] is the presence of a genial, well-stocked, humane mind lovingly immersed in its subject-matter, unbuttoned and anecdotal but painstaking in its scholarship. Mercier taught himself Irish in his mid-thirties, and some of the fruits of that labour are evident here in his authoritative discussion of translations of Gaelic texts. The volume is crammed with minor delights."--London Review of Books
"Mercier's interpretation is persuasive-a brilliant contribution to Beckett criticism."--Magill's Literary Annual
"Mercier's generous and serious application to Irish yielded very rich dividends. Though it is hard to give a fair representation of Mercier's lively felicities in a short review, they are the informing spirit of the book."--Times Literary Supplement
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. [355]-360) and index.
Table of Contents
I. Introduction
1. Finite fields
2. Projective spaces and algebraic varieties
II. Elementary general properties
3. Subspaces
4. Partitions
5. Canonical forms for varieties and polarities
III. The line and the plane
6. The line
7. First properties of the plane
8. Ovals
9. Arithmetic of arcs of degree two
10. Arcs in ovals
11. Cubic curves
12. Arcs of higher degree
13. Blocking sets
14. Small planes
Appendix
Notation
References