This collection of essays explores the concept of patrimoine, a French word used to denote cultural heritage, traditional customs and practices ¿ the Gaelic equivalent is dúchas ¿ and the extent to which it impacts on France and Ireland. Borrowing from disciplines as varied as sociology, cultural theory, literature, marketing, theology, history, musicology and business, the contributors to the volume unearth interesting manifestations of how patrimoine resonates across cultural divides and bestows uniqueness and specificity on countries and societies, sometimes in a subliminal manner.
Issues covered include debt as heritage, Guinness as a cultural icon of «Irishness», faith-based tourism, the Huguenot heritage in Ireland, Irish musical inheritances since Independence, Skellig Michael and the commodification of Irish culture.
With a Foreword by His Excellency M. Stéphane Crouzat, French Ambassador to Ireland, this collection breaks new ground in assessing the close links between France and Ireland, links that will become all the more important in light of the United Kingdom¿s withdrawal from the European Union.

Eamon Maher is Director of the National Centre for Franco-Irish Studies in Dublin Technological University ¿ Tallaght Campus. He is editor of two series with Peter Lang: Studies in Franco-Irish Relations and Reimagining Ireland.
Eugene O¿Brien is Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department of English Language and Literature at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Ireland. He is also the editor for the Oxford University Press Online Bibliography project in literary theory. He has directed thirty-one PhD theses on the areas of Irish Studies and Literary and Critical Theory. His recent publications include Seamus Heaney as Aesthetic Thinker: A Study of the Prose (2016); The Soul Exceeds its Circumstances: The Later Poetry of Seamus Heaney (2016); Representations of Loss in Irish Literature, with Deirdre Flynn (2018); and Tracing the Cultural Legacy of Irish Catholicism: From Galway to Cloyne, and Beyond, with Eamon Maher (2018).

CONTENTS: Eugene O'Brien:
Metanoia
and Reflexive Thinking: Towards a Deconstruction of
Patrimoine
/Cultural Heritage - Eóin Flannery: Debt as Inheritance - Harry White: 'We did not choose this patrimony': Irish Musical Inheritances since Independence - Tony Kiely: 'Protestant Strangers and Others': Re-imagining the Contribution of French Huguenots and their Descendants to Ireland's Ancient '
Patrimoine'
- Catherine Maignant: The Reification of Sceilg Mhichíl - Déborah Vandewoude: Faith-based Tourism in Ireland and France - Patricia Medcalf: Irish Cultural Heritage through the Prism of Guinness's Ads in the 1980s - Brian Murphy: A Traditional Irish Family Butcher Shop: 'Harnessing the power of
Patrimoine'
- Julien Guillaumond: 'Butter them up': When Marketing Meets Heritage - The Case of Irish Butter in Germany - Maguy Pernot-Deschamps: 'Enfants d'ici, parents d'ailleurs' - Mary Pierse: George Moore: A Case of
Dúchas/Patrimoine
in Flux? - Grace Neville: 'I don't think I could have made a decent living without the French': An Analysis of Reviews of Irish Literature in
Le Monde
, 1950-2017.