The Cambridge History of Irish Poetry

The Cambridge History of Irish Poetry is a one-volume, multi-authored history of the poetic traditions on the island of Ireland and their relation to the courses of poetry beyond its shores. It attends to the crucial developments in the history of Irish poetry as well as the social, political, and cultural conditions underlying those developments, including the complex position of poets in Ireland during different historical eras. Individual chapters describe the ways in which formal, aesthetic, and compositional practices were inflected by political and social structures; provide expert accounts of the institutional and textual histories that have shaped the body of Irish poetry as we have it; and highlight the tradition's major texts, writers, and formations. Unparalleled in scope and depth, this book offers the most comprehensive and authoritative critical account of the Irish poetic tradition.