Novelist Edna O’Brien has come to be considered Ireland’s greatest living writer after decades of political denunciation and critical dismissal in her homeland since her groundbreaking 1960 Bildungsroman, The Country Girls. Beginning in the late 1990s, her work began to be taken seriously by literary critics. Most of the scholarship in O’Brien Studies since that time has comprised feminist and psychoanalytic studies, valuable work in positioning O’Brien in the canon.

30.11.2023, 14-16 Uhr

Time and again, Shakespeare demonstrates the frailty and contingency of the many historical and “imagined” communities that feature in his works. Many of his plays evolve around the conflict between individuals and society, depicting the bonds between friends, lovers, family members or even whole nations being put to the test by desire, jealousy, and ambition. If Shakespeare’s

communities are unstable to begin with, then discussions of diversity bring to light that very instability even further.

The Animal in Ireland, Real and Imagined: An International and Interdisciplinary Symposium

Irish cultural identity has been closely identified with the animal from the beginning of recorded history

and beyond. Irish mythology and folklore, like all traditional lore, feature nonhuman animals, hybrid

human-nonhuman beings, and tales of metamorphosis between the two.

The international symposium “The Animal in Ireland, Real and Imagined” addresses these and other

questions from an interdisciplinary perspective. Please send 250-300 word abstracts of proposed papers

with 150 word bios to irishstudies@uni-wuerzburg.de and maureen.oconnor@ucc.ie by 15 October

2023. Please use “Irish Animal” as the subject line. Selected contributions will be included in a

forthcoming publication. This symposium is organised by Maureen O’Connor, Ina Bergmann, Maria Eisenmann and Kirsten Sandrock.