Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1962. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 522-538).

This thesis examines the ways in which the ideology of Irish nationalism has influenced and shaped the works of five Irish poets from a Protestant background: Louis MacNeice, John Hewitt, Richard Murphy, Michael Longley and Derek Mahon. These poets began their careers during a time period in which the cultural framework for comprehending authentic Irish identity, place and history was largely yielded to the authority of the principles of nationalism. This made a considerable impact on the poets and the ways that they would be made to engage such themes in their poetry. Their works are often noted for expressing ambiguity, ambivalence and complexity with regard to the poets' relationship with their Protestant background. This thesis maintains that much of the conflict found within the poetry can be attributed to an internalisation of a number of precepts from the politicised cultural construct established by nationalism. The nationalist authority over the Irish identity-discourse has not been sufficiently explored or explicated in critical studies of these poets' works. This thesis is dedicated to examining the nuanced ways in which nationalism influenced the poets' understanding of the concepts of Irish identity, place and history. With respect to their individual biographies, contexts and backgrounds, detailed analyses will reveal the significant affect that the tenets of nationalism had on each writer's poetic output and career. The research will make clear the extent to which these five poets exemplify a particular paradigm of the Irish Protestant poetic psyche of the eras under review. The analyses will contribute a fresh perspective to critical understanding of the intricate, oftentimes complicated, relationship that these poets maintained with their community, culture and country of origin.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 235-246) Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 384-391). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Florida, 2003. / Title from title page of source document. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references.

In Ireland's divided society in which everything is political except solutions, the evaluation and redefinition of the governing metaphors of political and cultural identity is a matter of public concern. For nationalist Ireland, the traditional centrality of the poetic imagination to the development of the legitimating tropes of national identity endows representative status upon all subsequent poetry which treats of these themes. The heated public and critical debate about the poetry of Seamus Heaney derives from the recognition that as nations are "imagined communities", so the form and content of the poet's imaginative process is heavy with political and social implications. Heaney's poetic negotiation between the given collective traditions of his community and the transfigurative appeal of the individual imagination engaged with modernity, produces a sustained reflection upon the nature and implications of cultural identity in modern Ireland. What is implict in the tenor of the debate surrounding Heaney is explicit in Heaney f s compelling poetic, namely, that in the modern age cultural identity remains central to social and political definition. But whereas the fact of cultural identity is central to social definition, the form (either hegemonic or inclusivist) of any such expression of identity is dependent upon the discursive practices which imagine and construct such definitions. In this context what begins for Heaney as a lyric flirtation with the possibilities of language, becomes a critical reappraisal of nationalist ideology's governing metaphors of place, history and belonging. In order to situate and define Heaney's contribution to the preoccupying question of identity it is necessary to evaluate the history and discursive evolution of nationalism as an ideology. Such an evaluation demonstrates that nationalism as a product of post-dynastic modern societies, is dependent upon a number of figurative habits and discursive practices for its universal and universalising appeal. By identifying these formations and by establishing the connection between these figures of thought and the expression of cultural identity as a hegemonic or inclusivist narrative, criteria may be determined against which the status of Heaney's own expressions of cultural identity may be assessed. Against the contemporary background in which nationalism appears to have acquired the status of a political metaphysics, Heaney's candid engagement with the cherished illusions informing this perception reveals him for what he is - a definitively modern poet announcing to those who will listen that there is and must be, poetry after Auschwitz.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, March 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed July 8, 2008). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 347-368).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 332-382).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Germanic Studies, June 1999. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.