Broken Line: Denis Devlin and Irish Poetic Modernism: Denis Devlin and Irish Poetic Modernism - Softcover

Davis, Alex

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1900621371 ISBN 13: 9781900621373

Publisher: Univ College Dubli, 2019

Synopsis

Dennis Devlin's (1908-1959) poems have been championed by such Irish admirers as Brian Coffey, Beckett, Kinsella, and Montague, and by such American authors as Tate and Robert Penn Warren. This first-ever appraisal of Devlin's work, examines the poetry in the context of literary modernism and the poet's own successful career as a diplomat for the Free State and the Republic of Ireland. Setting the poetry within the wider frame of the modernism of Yeats and the Irish Literary Revival, Davis compares it with that of his contemporaries. The surrealist-inspired early poetry is viewed in the light of the high modernism of Eliot and in relation to the European avant-garde, while the poems of the mid- to late period are read in relation to the American New Criticism. Davis discusses the sexual politics of Devlin's renowned love poetry and addresses the historical and biographical subtexts of his major religious poems. The book concludes with the first substantial critical readings of a number of poets associated with the Dublin-based New Writers' Press and a look at contemporary linguistically innovative poetry in Ireland.

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Review:

"Alex Davis [has] written a groundbreaking and exciting study in which the general reader and student alike can recognise the true range of Irish poetry and the quite different backgrounds and artistic ambition of poets who happen to come from this country." Gerald Dawe Irish Times August 2000 "It's encouraging to see an academic in these islands tackling living writers of little official reputation - a brave engagement." Shearman 43 2000 "crisp, well-informed and well-judged, and ... badly needed to restore the reputation of and interest in the 'moderns'. UCD Press are to be congratulated: they are setting themselves high standards." Books Ireland Summer 2000 "The core of this book is a dense discussion of Devlin's poetry in relation to European and Anglo-American modernism ... Davis [also] provides a scholarly, theoretically informed reading of the poets who were left unconsumed during 'the critical feeding frenzy' that swarmed Northern Ireland poetry during the 1970s and 1980s" D. R. McCarthy, Huron College CHOICE Feb 2001 "contribute[s] greatly to our understanding not only of the individual poet's work but ... how Devlin took from and contributed to the wider poetic scene, both in Ireland and abroad. Davis [is] to be congratulated for [this] splendid stud[y] which provides many keys to unlocking the work of [this] neglected, but central, mid-century Irish poet." Irish Studies Review 10 (1) 2002 "an alternative narrative to the dominant Yeats to Heaney line. If certain voices prevail, another few years and 'Brian Coffey to Trevor Joyce' might be the better sales pitch." The Year's Work in English Studies 2002

About this edition

• Publisher: Univ College Dubli
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1900621371
• ISBN 13: 9781900621373
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224