Representing the Troubles

Text and images, 1970–2000

Brian Cliff & Eibhear Walshe, editors

In the second half of the twentieth century, Ireland experienced thirty years in which the political status of Northern Ireland was challenged by numerous acts of violence. Since the signing of the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement in 1998 it has been widely sensed that an era has passed in Irish history. Now seems accordingly an auspicious time to being an assessment of how the period of the Troubles was represented in literature, theatre, film and television drama. This collection of essays considers representations of the Troubles in these varied genres and includes lectures given at the Royal Irish Academy by writers Glenn Patterson, Anne Devlin and Colm Tóibín.

Brian Cliff is Britain Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta). He has published on Frank McGuinness, Paul Muldoon and the Irish Literary Theatre. Éibhear Walshe lectures in the Department of Modern English, University College Cork and is the editor of Ordinary People Dancing (1993), Sex, Nation and Dissent (1997) and Elizabeth Bowen Remembered (1999).