One of Ireland’s most-lauded poets, Derek Mahon’s work dealt often with themes of displacement and alienation, cultural decay, and the environment. In this article from 2018, James McElroy analyses the dismissal within Irish critical practice… Read the Article »Eco-Criticism and the Poetry of Derek Mahon
In this Studies article from 1960, author Neil Hurley delves into what he considers the ‘social philosophy’ of renowned Golden Age actor and filmmaker Charlie Chaplin. Discussing Chaplin’s impoverished beginnings, Hurley projects the lifelong impact… Read the Article »Charlie Chaplin’s ‘Social Philosophy’
As we reach the end of the first full week of the new year, and as we’ve been making resolutions for good changes in our lives – we present an extract from Dr Corinna Ricasoli’s… Read the Article »Memento Mori and the ‘Good Death’ in Baroque Art
Mary Guckian, ‘December Lights in Pearse Street’, Studies: An Irish Review, Vol. 98, No. 392 (Winter, 2009), 378. JSTOR link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25660700 – December Lights in Pearse Street Damp air hangs Over Pearse Street On a… Read the Article »Mary Guckian – December Lights in Pearse Street
In this review-cum-historical-account from the Summer 2015 edition of Studies, Tom Mooney discusses the background to the European premier of Pulitzer Prize-winning opera Silent Night at the Wexford Festival Opera, alongside a history of Wexford’s… Read the Article »“Silent Night” – Wexford, Opera, and the First World War
Renowned Irish academic Maurice Harmon, for many years professor of Anglo-Irish literature at UCD, was a frequent contributor to Studies about contemporary Irish poetry and died last October. The below extract is from an article… Read the Article »Thomas Kinsella as a nature poet
It is a truism of Seamus Heaney criticism that the poet had a very strong sense of place, and particularly a very strong sense of home. In the presentation speech given before Heaney received his… Read the Article »On Heaney, home and homecoming
Kavanagh wrote an important essay in Studies in 1959. It gives an account of what he called his ‘hegira’, his re-birth on the banks of the Grand Canal, as he recovered from his cancer treatment. It was in… Read the Article »The re-birth of Patrick Kavanagh
Eavan Boland (1944-2020) was one of the most important Irish poets of the late twentieth and twenty-first century. Her influence on a whole generation of women writers was immense, both through her own poetical craft… Read the Article »Eavan Boland on women poets in Ireland