Recorded November 3, 2020.

A lecture by Prof Nicholas Allen (University of Georgia) organised by the Oscar Wilde Centre in partnership with Trinity School of English and the Willson Institute, University of Athens, Georgia.

The coast is the scene of some of Irish literature’s most famous moments. James Joyce drew the imperial history of Ireland in the tangled outlines of Molly Bloom's memories of Gibraltar at Howth Head, while Anne Enright sketched the fragile bonds that connect the island’s diaspora in The Gathering. Seamus Heaney patrolled a northern archipelago that turned from violence to pastoral in the late poetry, just as Sinead Morrissey remakes Belfast’s shipyards and skyscapes in her latest collection, On Balance. Beginning with the maritime inheritances of the Yeats brothers, this lecture charts a series of cultural spaces where water meets land, picturing Irish literature as a littoral art whose marine aesthetics underpin significant works from John Banville, Eiléan ní Chuilleanáin and Kevin Barry.

Learn more at: https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/