From Landscapes to Cityscapes : Towards a Poetics of Dwelling in Modern Irish Verse

«Marjan Shokouhi’s new book attests to the ways in which Irish ecocritical scholarship has developed into more than a simple ‘subfield’ of Irish Studies. Shokouhi takes readers on a fascinating journey through the work of three iconic Irish poets in the modern period – Yeats, Kavanagh and MacNeice – from the burgeoning perspective of Irish ecological criticism, exhibiting the complexities of the Irish Literary Revival in addressing questions of place and identity and opening new avenues of research in relation to new voices and marginal identities.»

(Pilar Villar-Argáiz, University of Granada, Spain)

«From wild ancient forests to the Lagan riverside, From Landscapes to Cityscapes offers a new take on the sense of place in modern Irish poetry. Using Heidegger’s concept of dwelling, it examines the verse of Yeats, Kavanagh and MacNeice from an ecocritical perspective in a worthy contribution to the field.»

(Audrey Robitaillié, Lecturer in Anglophone Literature and Irish Studies, Institut Catholique de Toulouse)

The study of place and place attachments has been a staple subject of enquiry in the field of Irish Studies, which ever since the emergence of an Irish ecocritical scholarship in the early 2000s has acquired a new depth. Recent publications have integrated an environmental dimension that connects literary analyses to wider cultural and global concerns such as deforestation, urban sprawl, immigration, climate change and so on. Building on the existing scholarship, the present study offers readings from modern Irish verse in the light of Ireland’s natural and cultural landscapes. Simply put, From Landscapes to Cityscapes should be viewed as a minor ecocritical exercise in Irish Studies, hoping to inspire new perspectives that arise out of an environmental scrutiny of the age-old questions of place and identity in Irish literature.

The textual analysis focuses on the works of three major Irish poets of the modern period: William Butler Yeats, Patrick Kavanagh and Louis MacNeice. Contesting the often politicized and historicist boundaries set for defining Irishness and arguing for a recognition of new voices and marginal identities, this book considers a range of land/cityscapes in terms of their significance to the development of a more comprehensive view of both culture and environment in Ireland.