This new reading of Irish literature identifies, for the first time, the formative influence of music in Irish writing over the past 200 years. Although this influence has long been acknowledged in studies of Shaw and Joyce, White explores music as an abiding preoccupation in the work of Moore, Yeats, Synge, Shaw, Joyce, Beckett, Friel, and Heaney.

Harry White is Professor of Music at University College Dublin and a Fellow of the Royal Irish Academy of Music. From 2003-2006, he was inaugural President of the Society for Musicology in Ireland, and in 2006 he was elected to the Royal Irish Academy. He is general editor (with Gerard Gillen) of the series Irish Musical Studies and (with Barra Boydell) of the forthcoming Encyclopaedia of Music in Ireland. His previous books include The Keeper's Recital (1998) and The Progress of Music in Ireland (2005).

• Introduction: Words for Music: In Search of the Irish Omphalos


• 1: The Auditory Imagination of Thomas Moore


• 2: W.B.Yeats and the Music of Poetry


• 3: Why J.M. Synge Abandoned Music


• 4: Opera and Drama: Bernard Shaw and 'The Brandy of the Damned'


• 5: The 'Thought-Tormented Music' of James Joyce


• 6: Words after Music: Samuel Beckett after Joyce


• 7: Operas of the Irish Mind: Brian Friel and Music


• 8: Words Alone: Seamus Heaney, Music, and the Jurisdiction of Literary Forms


• Select Bibliography