Woven Shades of Green is an annotated selection of literature by authors who focus on the natural world and the beauty of Ireland. It begins with the Irish monks and their largely anonymous nature poetry, written at a time when Ireland was heavily forested. A section follows devoted to the changing Irish landscape, through both deforestation and famine, including the nature poetry of William Allingham, and James Clarence Mangan, essays from Thomas Gainford and William Thackerary, and novel excerpts from William Carleton and Emily Lawless. The anthology then turns to the nature literature of the Irish Literary Revival, including Yeats and Synge, and an excerpt from George Moore’s novel The Lake. Part four shifts to modern Irish nature poetry, beginning with Patrick Kavanaugh, and continuing with the poetry of Seamus Heaney, Eavan Boland, and others. Finally, the anthology concludes with a section on various Irish naturalist writers, and the unique prose and philosophical nature writing of John Moriarty, followed by a comprehensive list of environmental organizations in Ireland, which seek to preserve the natural beauty of this unique country.
Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.
"Irish literature’s ubiquitous relationship to the environment offers a vast reservoir of meditations on humanity’s relationship with non-human natures. This can often prove daunting to both established scholars and novice readers. For all those who are interested in the intersectional concerns that arise from Irish literature’s evocations of the environment, Tim Wenzell’s timely anthology will prove to be especially invaluable. The book brings into sharp focus the unique ways in which Irish history merges with national and geopolitical ecologies, and how geographical questions are always conflated with geological ones.”
"Time has shaped a distinctive history of Irish nature literature in a deeply gathered, insightful anthology....Itself a generous treasury of Irish nature poetry and prose, the book is ordered by historical responses to religion, romanticism, colonisation, catastrophe, nationalism and material success."
"Wenzell's annotated selection is timely, looking as it does at a genre that doesn't seem to have bitten in Ireland quite as hard as it has in other publishing territories, a symptom perhaps of a more complicated - and at times harrowing - relationship with the natural world."
"This anthology emphasizes the importance of the natural world of Ireland and the breadth of writing that has embraced it during many centuries."
"Readers familiar with Irish literature and ecocriticism will find this volume filled with familiar faces and materials, as well as a few more obscure and exciting ones. This anthology offers scholars a series of substantial pieces from which to expand and further consider Irish nature writing and Irish approaches to the natural world."
"Woven Shades of Green...shows the great variety and depth of editor Tim Wenzell’s knowledge and insight on the topic across history. He possesses a keen sense for choosing not only the key authors and texts, but also often underappreciated writers or lesser known works by famous ones."
"A generous and inclusive anthology, focusing mainly on poetry but open also to significant pieces of prose....The engagement by these writers shows a valuable addition to the literature of the natural world."
Foreword by John Wilson Foster Preface
Part I Early Irish Nature Poetry Introduction The Mystery Deer’s Cry St. Columcille of Iona Columcille Fecit Caelius Sedulius Invocation Anonymous Early Irish Nature Poetry The Blackbird by Belfast Lough The Scribe The White Lake The Lark The Hermit’s Song King and Hermit Song of the Sea Summer Has Come Song of Summer Summer is Gone A Song of Winter Arran Buile Suibhne Part II Nature Writing and the Changing Irish Landscape Introduction Thomas Gainsford A Description of Ireland William Allingham Wishing The Fairies The Lover and Birds Among the Heather In a Spring Grove The Ruined Chapel William Hamilton Drummond The Giant’s Causeway, Book First James Clarence Mangan The Dawning of the Day The Fair Hills of Eire, O! The Lovely Land: On a Landscape Painted by Maclise William Makepeace Thackeray From Irish Sketchbook William Carleton From The Black Prophet Emily Lawless From Hurrish: A Study Part III Nature and the Irish Literary Revival Introduction Katharine Tynan The Children of Lir High Summer Indian Summer Nymphs St. Francis to the Birds The Birds’ Bargain The Garden The Wind that Shakes the Barley AE (George Russell) By the Margin of the Great Deep Oversoul The Great Breath The Voice of the Waters A New World A Vision of Beauty Carrowmore Creation The Winds of Angus The Nuts of Knowledge Children of Lir Connla’s Well From The Candle of Vision William Butler Yeats Coole Park, 1929 Coole Park and Ballylee, 1931 Who Goes with Fergus? Down by the Salley Gardens In the Seven Woods The Shadowy Waters (Introductory Lines) The Cat and the Moon The Fairy Pedant The Lake Isle of Innisfree The Madness of King Goll The Song of Wandering Aengus ... The Stolen Child ... The Two Trees ... The White Birds ... The Wild Swans at Coole ... Eva Gore-Booth The Dreamer ... Re-Incarnation ... Secret Waters ... The Little Waves of Breffny The Weaver John Millington Synge In Kerry To the Oaks of Glencree Prelude In Glencullen On an Island From The Aran Islands Riders to the Sea George Moore Preface and Chapter 1 from The Lake Padraic Colum A Drover A Cradle Song Across the Door The Crane ... Dublin Roads .. River Mates ... Part IV Modern Irish Nature Poetry Introduction ... Patrick Kavanaugh .. Poplars Lilacs in the City October Canal Bank Walk Having to Live in the Country Inniskeen Road: July Evening On an Apple-Ripe September Morning Primrose Wet Evening in April Louis MacNeice The Sunlight on the Garden .. Wolves ... Tree Party Seamus Heaney .. Death of a Naturalist The Salmon Fisher to the Fisherman Limbo St. Kevin and the Blackbird . Eavan Boland The Lost Land The River Mountain Time This Moment Ode to Suburbia Escape ... A Sparrow Hawk in the Suburbs Moya Cannon Bees under Snow Eavesdropping Two Ivory Swans Winter View from Binn Briocain Primavera The Tube-Case Makers Crannog Hazelnuts John Montague All Legendary Obstacles The Wild Dog Rose The Trout Michael Longley The Osprey Badger Hedgehog Kingfisher Robin Out of the Sea Her Mime of the Lame Seagull Carrigskeewaun Saint Francis to the Birds Derek Mahon The Seasons Achill Aphrodite’s Pool The Mayo Tao Penhurst Place The Woods The Dream Play “A Hermit” Leaves Sean Lysaght Golden Eagle The Clare Island Survey Goldcrest From Bird Sweeney Desmond Egan The Great Blasket Sunday Evening Meadowsweet Snow Snow Snow Snow A Pigeon Dead Envoi Mary O’Malley Absent The Man of Aran Porpoises The Price of Silk is Paid in Gold The Storm Liaden with a Mortgage Briefly Tastes the Stars Rosemarie Rowley Osborn O h - Aimbirgin; A Cry from the Heart of a Poet—Morning in Beara The Blackbird of Derry of the Cairn In Praise of the Hill Between of Howth Blind Seamus McCourt: Welcome to the Bird’ Kitty Dwyer Part V The Literature of Irish Naturalists Introduction John Tyndall Belfast Address Robert Lloyd Praeger From The Way That I Went Michael Viney From A Year’s Turning From The Irish Times, “Another Life” Tim Robinson From Connemara: Listening to the Wind, “Preface” From Connemara: Listening to the Wind, “The Boneyard” John Moriarty From Invoking Ireland
Appendix: Environmental Organizations in Ireland Acknowledgments Bibliography Index
TIM WENZELL is an associate professor at Virginia Union University in Richmond, Virginia. He has published widely in all genres, including a novel, short stories, poetry, and ecocritical essays on both Irish and American literature, as well as the book Emerald Green: An Ecocritical Study of Irish Literature.
Please complete your information below to login.
Sign In
Create New Account