"Through essays written by established and younger scholars, Irish Modernism and the Global Primitive examines the ways a variety of modern Irish writers exploited or surrendered to primitivism and examines the intersection of Irish Modernism and the global rhetoric of the primitive encounter. The twelve essays in this collection focus critical attention on the broader study of global primitive alterities, especially from Africa, from the East, and on extreme representations of "indigenous others" from the New World. Contributors demonstrate how primitivism functions variously as an idealized nostalgia for the past, as a threat of the foreign, or as a potential representation of difference and connection. This collection addresses the ways Ireland's past primitive heritage regularly, though ironically, moves into the Irish present."--BOOK JACKET.

Omeros, a transatlantic Homeric epic poem, is widely considered the masterwork of Nobel laureate Derek Walcott and one of the most important pieces of postcolonial Caribbean literature. Yet it is also Walcott's most challenging work. In Omeros, Walcott constructs strategic layers of allusions and references that occasionally escape even seasoned scholars. This guide provides exhaustive textual annotations and is the ideal resource for mapping the intricate matrix of allusions in this influential poem. Using extensive research in St. Lucia, the birthplace of Walcott, Maria McGarrity illuminates a wide range of references that include classical literature, world mythologies, colonial politics, modern painting, the Caribbean contexts of Omeros, modern epics, the African elements of West Indian culture, and the critical African nexus within global cultures. In addition to extensive annotations and summaries of the poem's seven books, McGarrity draws attention to the lyricism of Walcott's language, the amazing originality of the poem's structure, and the stunning gaps that are spanned when far-removed allusions unexpectedly relate. When the allusions in Omeros are fully understood, these points of connection usher readers into a fascinating continuum of time and place in which the rich historical past is wrapped up in the contemporary present.

This book scrutinizes the way modern Irish writers exploited or surrendered to primitivism, and how primitivism functions as an idealized nostalgia for the past as a potential representation of difference and connection.

There has been an Irish presence within the Caribbean since at least the 1620s and yet the historical and cultural dimensions of this encounter remain relatively under-researched and are often conceived of in reductive terms by crude markers such as red legs or poor whites. While there are some striking reminders of this history in the names of people and places, as well as the renowned St Patrick's celebrations in Montserrat, this collection explores how the complications and contradictions of Irish-Caribbean relations are much richer and deeper than previously recognized. Offering a range of disciplinary perspectives, this volume opens up conversations between scholars based in Caribbean Studies and those in Irish Studies across the fields of history, politics, expressive cultural forms, and everyday practices. It makes an important contribution to Irish studies by challenging the dominance of a US diasporic history and a disciplinary focus on cultural continuity and ancestry. Likewise, within Caribbean studies, the Irish presence troubles the orthodox historical models for understanding race and the plantation, the race and class structures, as well as questions of ethnic and religious minorities. This ground-breaking collection of new work highlights the importance of understanding the transatlantic nexus between Ireland and the Caribbean in terms of the shared historical experiences of dislocation, diaspora and colonization, as well as of direct encounter. It pays tribute to the extraordinarily rich tradition of cultural expression that informs both cultures and their imagination of each other. The volume includes a list of resources that will encourage and facilitate ongoing research in this field.