Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
List of Contributors
1. Classics and Irish Politics: Introduction Isabelle Torrance and Donncha O'Rourke
I: RECEPTION AND REJECTION OF THE CLASSICS IN IRELAND
2. The Use and Abuse of Classics: Thoughts on Empire, Epic, and Language Declan Kiberd
3. Greece, Rome, and the Revolutionaries of 1916 Brian McGing
4. Classics in the Van of the Irish Revolt: Thomas MacDonagh, 'alien to Athens and Rome?' Eoghan Moloney
II: LANGUAGE POLITICS
5. Translating into Irish from Greek and Latin in the Early Years of the Irish State Síle Ní Mhurchú
6. Classics through Irish at University College, Galway, 1931-78 Pádraic Moran
7. Dinneen's Irish Virgil Fiachra Mac Góráin
8. Classics, Medievalism, and Cultural Politics in Myles na gCopaleen's Cruiskeen Lawn Columns Cillian O'Hogan
III: BETWEEN SCHOLARSHIP AND LITERATURE
9. Abjection and the Irish-Greek Fir Bolg in Aran Island Writing Arabella Currie
10. Sinn Féin and Ulysses: Between Professor Robert Mitchell Henry and James Joyce Edith Hall
11. Yeats and Oedipus: The Dark Road Chris Morash
IV: GENDER, SEXUALITY, AND CLASS
12. Wilde, Classicism, and Homosexuality in Modern Ireland Eibhear Walshe
13. Trojan Women and Irish Sexual Politics, 1920-2015 Isabelle Torrance
14. Irish Didos: Empire, Gender, and Class in the Irish Popular Tradition to Frank McGuinness's Carthaginians Siobhán McElduff
V: CLASSICAL POETRY AND NORTHERN IRELAND
15. Elegies for Ireland: W. B. Yeats, Michael Longley, and the Roman Elegists Donncha O'Rourke
16. Michael Longley's 'Ceasefire' and the Iliad Maureen Alden
17. Post-Ceasefire Antigones and Northern Ireland Isabelle Torrance
VI: MATERIAL CULTURE AND (DE)COLONIALISM
18. Classicism in the Making of Commemorative Monuments in Newly Independent Ireland Judith Hill
19. The Politics of Neoclassicism in Belfast and Dublin: A Tale of Two Buildings Suzanne O'Neill
20. The Classical Themes of Irish Coinage, 1928-2002: Images from a Usable Past Christine Morris
21. Epilogue Richard P. Martin
Bibliography
Index

About the Author

Isabelle Torrance is Professor of Classical Reception at Aarhus University, Denmark. She has published extensively on classical Greek literature, especially Greek tragedy, and its reception. From 2019-2024 she is Principal Investigator on the ERC-funded project Classical Influences and Irish Culture. Donncha O'Rourke is a Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Edinburgh. He has published extensively on classical literature, especially Roman elegiac and
didactic poetry.

Reviews

A weighty and wide-ranging volume ... Chapters are contributed by a formidable cast of scholars from several disciplines. They cover a wide range of Irish literary and material cultural engagements with the Greek and Roman classics.
*Emma Bridges and Henry Stead, Greece & Rome*

Immensely informative and thought-provoking, it tackles much material (archival and otherwise) that is new, difficult to access, and highly engaging. The editors and contributors have succeeded admirably in giving the classics their due place in Irish political life across a fraught century and more.
*Bryn Mawr Classical Review *