In this book, each chapter explores significant Irish texts in their
literary, cultural, and historical contexts. With an introduction that
establishes the multiple critical contexts for Irish cinema, literature,
and their adaptive textual worlds, the volume addresses some of the most
popular and important late 20th-Century and 21st Century works that have
had an impact on the Irish and global cinema and literary landscape. A
remarkable series of acclaimed and profitable domestic productions
during the past three decades has accompanied, while chronicling,
Ireland's struggle with self-identity, national consciousness, and
cultural expression, such that the story of contemporary Irish cinema is
in many ways the story of the young nation's growth pains and travails.
Whereas Irish literature had long stood as the nation's foremost
artistic achievement, it is not too much to say that film now rivals
literature as Ireland's key form of cultural expression. The
proliferation of successful screen versionings of Irish fiction and
drama shows how intimately the contemporary Irish cinema is tied to the
project of both understanding and complicating (even denying) a national
identity that has undergone radical change during the past three
decades. This present volume is the first to present a collective
accounting of that productive synergy, which has seen so much of
contemporary Irish literature transferred to the screen.
