This study aims to uncover the traces of the Sweeney legend (Buile Suibhne) in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Irish writers. Liminality serves as the key to uniting them. Close textual readings illuminate the profound significance of Sweeney's Revival, resonating across Irish history, society, and the world at large.
Hiroko Ikeda is Professor in the Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies, Kyoto University, Japan. She coedited Irish Literature in the British Context and Beyond: New Perspectives from Kyoto (2020), which includes her essay 'Beyond being Irish or Celtic: The Double Vision of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill's «Cailleach/Hag» in Feis'.
Contents: Sweeney, W. B. Yeats, and James Joyce - Double Visions: Austin Clarke's 'The Frenzy of Suibhne' - 'The black earth my earth- bed': Derek Mahon's The Snow Party - 'A soul journey': Tom Mac Intyre's 'Sweeney among the Branches' - Reviving and Revived: Seamus Heaney's Sweeney Astray - Resisting Authority: Brian Friel's Molly Sweeney - Mother to be Grafted: Dermot Bolger's A Second Life - Revolutionizing Vulnerable Birds: Paula Meehan's Mrs Sweeney - Sweeney and Cailleach: Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill's 'Muirghil ag Cáiseamh Shuibhne [Muirghil Castigates Sweeney]'.