This new interdisciplinary treatise on the unusual features of literary and cultural items connected with the ancient idea of “translation” including the motif of ascension as a phenomenon complete with its own premises, literary and narratological conceits, but one that has been understudied as an influence on Western culture, religion and its literary production. Professor Sorensen has completed a wide-ranging study and made some surprising conclusions as to the full weight and impact of this religious motif in medieval, Renaissance, Classical and Modern literature and art.

C.C.O’Brien’s extremely provocative and prolific literary criticism has been edited into a well organized study emphasizing the various writers and genres that have fascinated this great Irish statesman and writer. With notes and extensive introduction by Professor Skelly. This work is very useful(and revealing) of the currents in midcentury Irish and British writing and is particularly revealing discussing the origins of the new Irish literary renaissance in poetry and theatre that has emerged in the last two decades.

This research work is an important one in theatre history as no published survey of directorial history exists and, while some reference works discuss directors, none concentrates on American directors nor takes a systematic approach to the subject. This monograph does exactly that. IDEAS OF THEATRE will be of great use to students and scholars of American theatre history as well as the history and development of our national stage.

Chapters include:

1. The Rise of the Director in the American Theatre
2. Ben Teal and the Authoritarian Perspective of Directing

Nicholas Rowe flourished during the first quarter of the 18thc: he was poet laureate to George I, the author of eight plays(three of which were great successes) and he was the esteemed translator of Lucan’s PHARSALIA as well as the first modern editor of Shakespeare’s plays. But most of all he was known as a playwright.

Vachel Lindsay introduced a genuinely new rhythm into American poetry and was America’s first real folk poet—superior to Sandburg and articulating a sense of awe, loss and resentment at the passing of the older freedoms and dignities of pre industrial America. His topics (Negro revivals, Salvation Army meetings, Chautauqua gatherings) would seem to be utterly dated---yet Lindsay was a modernist in spite of himself and influenced greatly later poets and writers as dis separate as Hart Crane, Edgar Lee Masters, Robert Frost ,James T Farrell and William Faulkner as well as Jack Kerouac.

A major reconsideration of Jonathan Swift’s work undertaken by one of the most influential Swift scholars in the world ( as well as one of the most important editors in the world of Swiftian studies) The volume discusses biographical concerns(Swift’s early family history, Stella’s education)before launching into a thorough discussion of the controversies surrounding the satirical works (Tale of a Tub to A Modest Proposal). Real discusses the variety of challenges posed by Gulliver’s Travels and explicates the historicist and axiological principles informing his criticism of Swift.

Biography with writings, poems and translations of James Keegan(1859-1894). Keegan was a supporter(along with Douglas Hyde) of the Irish Gaelic League and was part of the early Irish Renaissance in creative writing and national consciousness. Keegan, whilst a priest, also wrote for national journals under a variety of pseudonyms and with an uncanny ability to favete linguis as far as his superiors were concerned. Little is known of Keegan and this is the first full study of his brief but active career and his literary production. Keegan worked as an parish priest in Ireland and in the U.S.

This research work deals with subjects of great interest in current criticism---the impact of the New Historicist studies on the interpretation of American literary naturalism, and the issue of the possible persistence of the movement in contemporary fiction. Other essays deal with Norris, Crane and Dreiser who have up to now been considered canonical figures within literary naturalism while Wharton and Chopin are discussed as recent and welcome additions to the discussion of this movement and American literature in general.

This late 19th century novel was one of the first to deal with crime and punishment in Ireland, as well as a host of other issues from a feminist as well as socially progressive point of view. Long out of print, Professor Murphy makes the case for its inclusion in the canon of Irish literature via a superbly written Introduction and an extensive series of notes and text discussions. Full text reproduced.

Irish criticism of Jonathan Swift's work during his lifetime contributed to the formation of a uniquely Irish public sphere of letters- a public for whom the literary artist stood as the symbol and representative in the absence of empowered political institutions. This spirit was marked in Kathleen Williams' collection of eighteenth century criticism of Swift's work, entitled JONATHAN SWIFT: The Critical Heritage (Routledge, 1970).