A provocative range of essays on twentieth-century Irish authors, critics and culture framed in contexts of transition and transnationalism.

Introduction Eve Patten; Part I. After the War: Ideologies in Transition: 1. The Second World War and its literary legacies Guy Woodward; 2. Outside the whale: Seán O'Faoláin and the European public intellectual Brad Kent; 3. Irish writers and Europe Aidan O'Malley; 4. Becoming a Republic: Irish writing in transition Nicholas Allen; Part II. Genres in Transition: 5. Intermodernism and the middlebrow in Irish writing John Brannigan; 6. Transitional life writing: Frank O'Connor and the autobiographical tradition Muireann Leech; 7. Somehow it is not the same: Irish theatre and transition Chris Morash; 8. Samuel Beckett, Flann O'Brien and the literature of absurdity David Wheatley; Part III. Sex, Politics and Literary Protest: 9. Censorship, law and literature Eibhear Walshe; 10. Sex, dissent and Irish fiction: reading John McGahern Frank Shovlin; 11. History, memory and protest in Irish theatre Emilie Pine; 12. Violence, politics and the poetry of the troubles Rosie Lavan; Part IV. Identities and Connections: 13. State, space and experiment in Irish language prose writing Máirín Nic Eoin; 14. Anglo-Ireland: the big house novel in transition Heather Ingman; 15. American-Irish literary relations Ellen McWilliams; 16. 'Home rule in our literature': Irish-British poetic relations Tom Walker; Part V. Retrospective Frameworks: Criticism in Transition: 17. Literary biography in transition Paul Delaney; 18. Publishing, Penguin and Irish writing Paul Rooney; 19. Curriculum to canon: Irish writing and education Margaret Kelleher; 20. Critics, criticism and the formation of an Irish literary canon Shaun Richards.