SEATANGLEDIreland, Literature And The Coast Mixdown

Recorded November 3, 2020. A lecture by Prof Nicholas Allen
(University of Georgia) organised by the Oscar Wilde Centre in
partnership with Trinity School of English and the Willson
Institute, University of Athens, Georgia. The coast is the scene of
some of Irish literature’s most famous moments. James Joyce drew
the imperial history of Ireland in the tangled outlines of Molly
Bloom's memories of Gibraltar at Howth Head, while Anne Enright
sketched the fragile bonds that connect the island’s diaspora in
The Gathering. Seamus Heaney patrolled a northern archipelago that
turned from violence to pastoral in the late poetry, just as Sinead
Morrissey remakes Belfast’s shipyards and skyscapes in her latest
collection, On Balance. Beginning with the maritime inheritances of
the Yeats brothers, this lecture charts a series of cultural spaces
where water meets land, picturing Irish literature as a littoral
art whose marine aesthetics underpin significant works from John
Banville, Eiléan ní Chuilleanáin and Kevin Barry. Learn more at:
https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/