Between Shadows: Modern Irish Writing and Culture

Now available in paperback, Between Shadows is a sequel to John Wilson Foster’s acclaimed Colonial Consequences (1991) and, like its predecessor, is a wide-ranging encounter with modern Irish writers and modern Irish culture. Among the writers are Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, Martin McDonagh, Tim Robinson, Conor McPherson, and Sebastian Barry. The wartime Ulster literary scene, the celebration of Bloomsday, Irish nationalism, and the Great War are among the cultural episodes and phenomena the author engages with in this varied set of critical engagements. *** If Irish literary and cultural criticism has taken off since the 1970s - and it has - John Wilson Foster is one of the main reasons. He has widened its conceptual horizon, provoked new debates, redefined old debates, and helped to make other critics as historically conscious as he is himself. - from the Foreword by Edna Longley