Changing States Book

In Changing States Robert Welch examines the work of major modern Irish writers and draws attention to the aspects of modern Irish literature that make it so distinctive and powerful. Looking at the work of Yeats, Heaney, Synge, Beckett, Joyce and Máirtín Ó Cadhain, Welch argues that what unites these writers is each one's attempt to respond to the transformation of Ireland from Gaelic to twentieth-century post-industrial culture. Writing against a sense of loss, their work is distinguished by certain key features: an intense awareness of the power of language; a preoccupation with change; an obsession with the past and its meaning and with the provisionality of the self.
This is an unique in-depth study of individual authors in the context of cultural and linguistic change. It will be an invaluble text for anyone interested in Irish life and literature or in language and translation.