What is Thomas MacGreevy and the Rise of the Irish Avant-Garde 2019 about?
This book examines Thomas MacGreevy’s central role in the development of Irish culture from the arrival of national independence in 1922 to the moment of programmatic modernisation during the early 1960s.
It makes a strong case for the reassessment of his achievement across the full range of his activities as poet, First World War combatant, Irish nationalist, art critic and curator, sponsor of abstract art and Director of the National Gallery and establishes his social position among the individuals and groups that collaborated to produce, exhibit, consume and debate some of Ireland’s most radical works to date. In so doing, the book expands our understanding of a period that has often been regarded by cultural historians as one of depressing failure.
October 2019 | 9781782053569 | €39 £35 $45| Hardback |234 x 156mm| 160 pages |
Its close and extended readings of poems, paintings, notebooks and draft materials – and compelling discussions of relevant social, literary and art-historical contexts – provide new insight into the creative work that challenged and reshaped Irish culture and identity when an authoritarian state (Saorstát Éireann) was a force for censorship, national conservatism and cultural homogeneity.
Thomas MacGreevy and the Rise of the Irish Avant-Garde will benefit scholars and students of Irish Studies, international modernism and postcolonial literature. It will also find an audience among Irish art historians and students of twentieth-century art.
Francis Hutton-Williams is a Teacher of English at Dulwich College, UK.
“This study does an excellent job of connecting disparate strands of MacGreevy’s life and work too often compartmentalised, namely his poetry, literary criticism, and art criticism. It is particularly strong on the in-between nature of MacGreevy’s position, too Irish nationalist to have won a British reputation, but too internationalist for the Irish Ireland contingent in Free State cultural politics. While the outlines of this career pattern are well-enough known, the patient elaboration of MacGreevy’s critical and curatorial career brings them to life in new and illuminating ways.” Dr David Wheatley, University of Aberdeen
“Thomas McGreevy and the Rise of the Irish Avant-Garde adds much to our knowledge not only of MacGreevy but also of First World War poetry and Irish modernism. This is a timely and important book.” Lee M. Jenkins, Professor of English, University College Cork