Patrick Rafroidi

The histories of western romanticism have until now forgotten Ireland whose literature in English is often believed to have began with Joyce, Yeats or O'Casey. This book is an attempt to take care of this oversight…

Desmond Egan's poetry does not refuse the live-giving earth. He dedicated many beautiful poems to the Midlands of his youth, the little town of Athlone where he was born, the landscapes, the seasons, the inhabitants of Ireland. There is a poetic geography and a history or a Celtic pre-history…

The plays gathered here are the works of two famous northern Irish dramatists who experienced the ever-present Civil War that they stage with faith and talent. The spirit that enimates Boyd and Friel is the same, the places are different…

Brian Friel, born in 1929 in Northern Ireland, is the author of several radio plays and a dozen theatre plays, given in Belfast, Dublin, London, New York. He is one of the most famous contemporary English-language dramatists…

Catholics is more than the reflection of a major writer's personality and a masterpiece of construction and economy. Behind the confrontation between the young priest, harbinger of a new-style Church that turns its back on tradition, and the uncooperative Abbot…

If Ireland keeps eternal values, it is also a country that, yesterday economically under-developed, is now preparing, slowly but surely, its entry into the twenty-first century. This unprecedented mutation in its already turbulent history, affects Irish politics, industry, trade…

Wherever the deep reasons for the success of the short story in Ireland come from — the historical, sociological or aesthetical progression of the country — it is a well-known fact, together with the excellence of numerous of its followers, from Carleton to John McGahern, from George Moore to the inevitable Joyce…

Irish literature has not received the critical attention it deserves, except for its giants: Yeats in poetry, Synge and O'Cosey in theatre, Joyce… In the genre of the novel, he is far from being the only one…

Ireland's entry in the common market? Civil War in the North? Need to rediscover a remote but so similar fellow, to change landscape and myths? There may be many reasons but the fact is France is more and more interested in its Celtic sister…

Even if we don't wish to argue with England, America or France over their dramatists from Ireland, we must admit that a Sheridan, a Shaw, a O’Neill or a Beckett, that is neither fully English, American or French, obstinately retains a certain something that betrays the trace of their ancestral tradition. And then, there are the one whose specific..