B Arla Gaeilge

Recently, chapters on individual Irish-language authors have formed part of publications regarding modern Irish art and culture in general. Such chapters are welcome but they have excited the curiosity of readers to the degree that longer, more detailed works are now required to put writing in Irish into perspective. In this study of four modern poets (two each from two generations), Sewell attempts to illustrate not only the accumulative but the transformative nature of tradition. Chapters 1 and 2 turn from the mid-20th century master Seán Ó Riordáin to the contemporary poet Cathal Ó Searcaigh because the comparison and contrast highlights significant aspects of the amazing development of Irish poetry and, indeed, society in the period. Here, importantly, the word 'development' is meant in a neutral way - the image used is that of a zig-zag movement in the pattern of the continuing Irish tradition. Chapter 3 returns to the slightly earlier, major Irish-language poet Máirtín Ó Direáin. In doing so, it returns home (from the internationalism of the previous chapter on Searcaigh) to Ireland - a major focus and concern for the more solely traditionalist Ó Direáin. This switch back (in time, geography, social mores or outlook) fits and illustrates Sewell's concept of the zig-zag movement of a country's culture as it proceeds from generation to generation. The positioning, therefore, has a thematic purpose. The fourth and final chapter focuses on the contemporary poet Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill who has managed to synthesise tradition and modernity (central concerns of this book) and who, in doing so, has become the current trail-blazer of Irish poetry in either language.

This book tracks the development of social complexity in Ireland from the late prehistoric period on into the Middle Ages. Using a range of methods and techniques, particularly data from settlement patterns, Blair Gibson demonstrates how Ireland evolved from constellations of chiefdoms into a political entity bearing the characteristics of a rudimentary state. This book argues that early medieval Ireland's highly complex political systems should be viewed as amalgams of chiefdoms with democratic procedures for choosing leaders rather than kingdoms. Gibson explores how these chiefdom confederacies eventually transformed into recognizable states over a period of 1,400 years.

When Ciaran Carson's first book of poems, The New Estate, was published in 1976, Tom Paulin hailed him as 'a brilliant and formidable talent'. His second collection, The Irish for No, appears after a gap of ten years.

Transhumance is a form of pastoralism that has been practised around the world since animals were first domesticated. Such seasonal movements have formed an important aspect of many European farming systems for several thousand years, although they have declined markedly since the nineteenth century. Ethnographers and geographers have long been involved in recording transhumant practices, and in the last two decades archaeologists have started to add a new material dimension to the subject. This volume brings together recent advances in the study of European transhumance during historical times, from Sweden to Spain, Romania to Ireland, and beyond that even Newfoundland. While the focus is on the archaeology of seasonal sites used by shepherds and cowherds, the contributions exhibit a high degree of interdisciplinarity. Documentary, cartographic, ethnographic and palaeoecological evidence all play a part in the examination of seasonal movement and settlement in medieval and post-medieval landscapes. Notwithstanding the obvious diversity across Europe in terms of livestock, distances travelled and socio-economic context, an extended introduction to the volume shows that cross-cutting themes are now emerging, including mobility, gendered herding, collective land-use, the agency of non-elite people and competition for grazing and markets. The book will appeal not only to archaeologists, but to historians, geographers, ethnographers, palaeoecologists and anyone interested in rural lifeways across Europe.

In Modernism and the Celtic Revival, Gregory Castle examines the impact of anthropology on the work of Irish Revivalists such as W. B. Yeats, John M. Synge and James Joyce. Castle argues that anthropology enabled Irish Revivalists to confront and combat British imperialism. Castle shows how Irish Modernists employed textual and rhetorical strategies first developed in anthropology to translate, reassemble, and edit oral and folk-cultural material. Drawing on a wide range of postcolonial theory, this book should be of interest to scholars in Irish studies, postcolonial studies, and Modernism.

Published to celebrate the centenary of Beckett's birth