| Memory Ireland Despite the ease with which scholars have used the term "memory" in recent decades, its definition remains enigmatic. Does cultural memory rely on the memories of individuals, or does it take shape beyond the borders of the individual mind? Cultural memory has garnered particular attention within Irish studies. With its trauma-filled history and sizable global diaspora, Ireland presents an ideal subject for work in this vein. What do stereotypes of Irish memory--as extensive, unforgiving, begrudging, but also blank on particular, usually traumatic, subjects--reveal about the ways in which cultural remembrance works in contemporary Irish culture and in Irish diasporic culture? How do icons of Irishness--from the harp to the cottage, from the Celtic cross to a figure like James Joyce--function in cultural memory? This collection seeks to address these questions as it maps a landscape of cultural memory in Ireland through theoretical, historical, literary, and cultural explorations by top scholars in the field of Irish studies. Oona Frawley is a lecturer in the Department of English at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. She is the author of Irish Pastoral: Nostalgia in Twentieth-Century Irish Literature and the editor of contributed volumes on James Joyce and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill. |