Subjects

For the period of compulsory distant teaching, the seminar will take place online via Zoom. Prior to the first class in the semester, students will be provided by access details via email.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Ireland’s traditional image as a “green-meadowed” island situated on the edge of Europe and its current position as one of the biggest emitters of greenhouse gasses per capita in the EU make it a questionable site of pastoral myth. As it reflects the nation’s complex cultural and linguistic identity informed by a post-colonial mix of victimhood and guilt, Irish poetry appears to be particularly well suited for eco-critical analysis. In this course, we will read works by Irish and Northern-Irish poets of the last one hundred years and explore them in the light of a changing climate and the ongoing archipelagic as well as transatlantic poetic connections.

Last update: Theinová Daniela, Mgr., Ph.D. (02.02.2021)

COURSE REQUIREMENTS AND ASSESSMENT

Credit requirements include regular attendance (max. 2 unexplained absences per semester), participation in the in-class discussion based on the reading of all assigned texts and preparation of any preliminary questions. If you cannot attend more than twice or attend without having done the required reading, you will be asked to provide your response in writing. You will also be asked to submit an essay of 1500–2000 words on a topic related to the course’s subject matter. To get credits for the class as well as graded paper, you will need to submit a longer and thoroughly researched paper of 2500 to 3000 words.

The topic of the essay must be consulted with the instructor by the end of the course. The word limit includes footnotes but excludes the title page and bibliographical references.

Essays must include full bibliographical references and footnotes (included in the word count) for all works cited or paraphrased (see the UALK Chicago Guidelines on the department website or the course site on Moodle for details). Emphasis will be placed on depth and sophistication of argument, and upon the component of original research. Essays must be presented with attention to correct spelling and stylistics. Plagiarism will not be tolerated and will result in a fail grade.

Last update: Theinová Daniela, Mgr., Ph.D. (02.02.2021)

Recommended Secondary Reading:

Bate, Jonathan. Romantic Ecology: Wordsworth and The Environmental Tradition. Oxon: Routledge, 1991.
Bate, Jonathan. The Song of the Earth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.
Flannery, Eóin. Ireland and Ecocriticism: Literature, History and Environmental Justice. Oxon: Routledge, 2015.
Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. London: Penguin UK, 2000.
Clark, Timothy. The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and the Environment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Cronin, Michael. Irish and Ecology. Dublin: Foras na Gaeilge, 2019.
DesJardins, Joseph R. Environmental Ethics: An Introduction to Environmental Philosophy. Fifth edition. Wadsworth, Boston, MA: Cenage Learning, 2013.
Evans, Nicholas. Dying Words: Endangered Languages and What They Have To Tell Us.Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
Fill, Alwin and Peter Muhlhausler, eds. The Ecolinguistics Reader. London: Bloomsbury, 2006.
Frawley, Oona. Irish Pastoral: Nostalgia and Twentieth-Century Irish Literature. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2001.
Garrard, Greg. Ecocriticism. Oxon: Rougledge, 2012.
Gifford, Terry. Pastoral. London: Routledge, 1999.
Huggan, Graham and Helen Tiffin. Postcolonial Ecocriticism: Literature, Animals, Environment. Oxon: Routledge, 2015.
Jamieson, Dale. Ethics and the Environment: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Kirkpatrick, Kathryn and Borbála Faragó, eds. Animals in Irish Literature and Culture.Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
Mathews, Freya. Routledge Handbook of Gender and Environment. Edited by Sherilyn MacGregor. London: Routledge, 2017.
McCloskey, James. “A Global Silencing”. The Poetry Ireland Review 52 (Spring, 1997): 41-46.
McKibben, Bill. The End of Nature.New York: Random House, 2016.
Moore, Bryan L. Ecology and Literature: Ecocentric Personification from Antiquity to the 21^st-Century. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
Slovic, Scott, Swarnalatha Rangarajan and Vidya Sarveswaran, eds. Routledge Handbook of Ecocriticism and Environmental Communication. Oxon: Routledge, 2019.
Stibbe, Arran. Ecolinguistics: Language, Ecology and the Stories We Live By.Oxon: Routledge, 2015.
Zapf, Hubert. “Ecology and the Ethics of Texts”. New Literary History, 39.4 Reexamining Literary Theories and Practices (Autumn 2008): 847-868.
Zapf, Hubert. Literature as Cultural Ecology.London: Bloomsbury, 2016.

Last update: Theinová Daniela, Mgr., Ph.D. (02.02.2021)

seminář

Last update: Znojemská Helena, Mgr., Ph.D. (16.12.2020)

SYLLABUS

NB: Please note that the classes begin on 23 February 2021. The selection of texts in the syllabus is tentative; please check the course site on Moodle to find an updated reading list and questions for each week of the course.

Week 1
Introduction: The Impossible Irish Pastoral

Week 2
Romantic Legacies: W. B. Yeats, J. M. Synge
Texts:
W. B. Yeats, “The Fisherman”, “The Wilde Swans at Coole”, “The Second Coming”, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”, “The Municipal Gallery Revisited”
J. M. Synge, The Aran Islands (selection), “Samhain”, “Queens”
H. D. Thoreau, Walden (selection)

Week 3
Patrick Kavanagh’s Rural Alienation
Texts:
Patrick Kavanagh, The Great Hunger
Oliver Goldsmith, The Deserted Village (selection)
Selection of poems by John Clare

Week 4
Irish Language Poetry and Ecolinguistics
Texts:
Selection of poems by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Máirtín Ó Direáin and Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh
James McCloskey, “A Global Silencing”, The Poetry Ireland Review 52 (Spring, 1997): 41-46.

Week 5
Seamus Heaney’s Pastoral Politics
Texts:
Selection of poems from Heaney’s The Death of a Naturalist, Field Work and Sweeney Astray
Selection of poems by William Wordsworth and Ted Hughes
Seamus Heaney, “The Makings of a Music: Reflections on Wordsworth and Yeats”, Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968-1978 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1980), 61-78.

Week 6
Sea and Beach: Derek Mahon’s Fluid Allegiances
Texts:
Selection of poems by Mahon, including “Homage to Gaia”, “The Disused Shed in County Wexford”, “North Sea” and “The Apotheosis of Tins”
Eóin Flannery, “‘Listen to the Leaves’: Derek Mahon’s Evolving Ecologies”, Criticism, 57.3 (Summer 2015): 377-401.

Week 7
Nature, Science, Culture: Caitríona O’Reilly
Texts:
Selection of poems by O’Reilly, including “Polar”, “Amanita Virosa”, “Cedar of Lebanon” and The Sea Cabinet
Selection of poems by Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plat
Jefferson Holdridge, “Reclaiming the Wilderness: Nature and Perception in Caitríona O'Reilly”, Études irlandaises, 31.1 (2006): 11-25.
Derek Woods, “Scale in Ecological Science Writing” in Scott Slovic, Swarnalatha Rangarajan and Vidya Sarveswaran eds., Routledge Handbook of Ecocriticism and Environmental Communication (Oxon: Routledge, 2019), 118-128.

Week 8
More Mushrooms: Ailbhe Darcy
Texts:
Selection of poems by Darcy from Imaginary Menagerie and Insistence, including “Silver”, “Mushrooms”, “Jellyfish” and “Alphabet”
Ailbhe Darcy, “Or, How I Learned to Keep Worrying: Collaborative Writing, Motherhood, and the Atom Bomb”, The Critical Flame 48 (May/June 2017). http://criticalflame.org/or-how-i-learned-to-keep-worrying-collaborative-writing-motherhood-and-the-atom-bomb/
Brenda Wineapple, “The Politics of Politics; or, How the Atomic Bomb Didn't Interest Gertrude Stein and Emily Dickinson”, South Central Review 23.3 (Fall, 2006): pp. 37-45.

Week 9
Deep Time: Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin
Texts:
Selection of poems by Ní Chuilleanáin, including “The Crevasse”, “Glacier”, “Permafrost Woman”, “Pygmalion’s Image” and “Letter to Pearse Hutchinson”
Timothy Clark, “Ecofeminism”, The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and the Environment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 121-135.
Joseph R. DesJardins, “Radical Environmental Philosophy: Deep Ecology and Ecofeminism” in Environmental Ethics: An Introduction to Environmental Philosophy, fifth edition (Wadsworth, Boston, MA: Cenage Learning, 2013) 203-231

Week 10
Embodied Perception: Medbh McGuckian
Texts:
Selection of McGuckian’s poems from her more recent collections, including “Mr McGregor’s Garden” and “The Contingency of Befalling”

Week 11
In the Animal Skin: Sinéad Morrissey and Leontia Flynn
Texts:
Selection of poems by Morrissey, including “Restoration”, “Pilots”, “Gull Song” and “Monteverdi Vespers
Selection of poems by Flynn, including “The Fish in the Berlin Aquarium”
Les Murray, “Ariel”, “Emerald Doves”
Sections on “Anthropocentrism” and “Anthropomorphism” from Timothy Clark, The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and the Environment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

Week 12
On Weather and Ghosts: Conor O’Callaghan
Texts:
Extracts from O’Callaghan’s novel Nothing on Earth and a selection of his poems, including “January Drought”, “The Modern Pastoral Elegy”, “Any day Now” and “Trailer Park Études”
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (selection)
Greg Garrard, “The Trouble with Apocalypse” in Ecocriticism (Oxon: Rougledge, 2012), 113-117.

Last update: Theinová Daniela, Mgr., Ph.D. (02.02.2021)