Please pick one text or two films from the following and write a paper that does the following:
Briefly summarizes the work/plot/setting.
Places the work in its historical context: what is the setting? what aspects of twentieth-century Irish history and life does it describe/address?
How would you use such a work in a class you were teaching on Irish history?
What do reviewers or scholars say about the work and what it attempts to do? Do you agree with their assessments?
Suggested Books (feel free to choose another, but please get my approval first. Same goes for films.)
- Sebastian Barry, The Secret Scripture
- Brendan Behan, Borstal Boy
- Elizabeth Bowen, The Last September
- Roddy Doyle, The Woman Who Walked into Doors
- Anna Burns, Milkman
- Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha-ha-ha
- Anne Enright, The Gathering
- Eoin Macnamee, The Assassin
- Bernard MacLaverty, Cal
- Liam O’Flaherty, The Informer
- Patrick McCabe, The Butcher Boy
- Edna O’Brien, The Country Girls
- Sally Rooney, Normal People
- Colm Toibin, Brooklyn
- JG Farrell, Troubles
- Donal Ryan, The Spinning Heart
- Flann O’Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds
Films
- Some Mother’s Son
- The Secret of Roan Inish
- The Secret of Kells
- Cal
- The Snapper
- The Field
- The Boxer
- The Wind That Shakes the Barley
- The Playboys
- The Magdalene Sisters
- My Left Foot
- Intermission
- The General
- In America
- Brooklyn
- Philomena