Joseph Lennon | Villanova University (original) (raw)

Papers by Joseph Lennon

New Hibernia Review, 2007

This research uses digital tools including geospatial, timeline, and chart programs to explore th... more This research uses digital tools including geospatial, timeline, and chart programs to explore the more than 1,200 recorded hunger strikes that took place in British prisons during that span. The primary purpose of the project is to trace instances of hunger strikes over time and space. By viewing large sets of data in this fashion, viewers can identify trends across both time and location much more easily than by relying on the textual records from the Home Office. The project also explores some details about the strikes that the records reveal. For each year of the official record we present data on reasons for the strikes, methods of force feeding, and length of strikes. This project sheds light on some of the many challenges and opportunities that digital applications can offer the humanities. One challenge is how to present data in a way that is clear, accessible, and thought-provoking without overwhelming viewers with complex displays. A dominant question of the project has be...

New Hibernia Review, 2016

's interest in playwrights tends toward the poetic. In 1998 she wrote that "there are poets of th... more 's interest in playwrights tends toward the poetic. In 1998 she wrote that "there are poets of the theatre and there are prose writers of the theatre. The ones who interest me are the poets of the theatre." 1 She also has stated directly that she prefers poetry to other genres, and two of her plays, By the Bog of Cats (1998) and Woman and Scarecrow (2006), specifically turn on the concerns of lyric poetry. 2 These plays are not lyric dramas in the sense that the term is applied to opera and musical theater-although Carr translated the libretto for Verdi's Rigoletto for a 2015 production in Dublin. Rather, these two plays are lyrical in the sense that they borrow from poetic form and participate within a tradition of lyrical lament, particularly those that circle around lost mothers. Lyrical poetry has played an outsized role in Irish literature, from medieval verse in Irish to contemporary poetry that employs what Eric Falci has termed the "counterlyric," a dynamic that both critiques and furthers lyric poetry's possibilities. 3 The lyric's influence on Irish drama has also been large, stemming from W.B. Yeats's influence on the Abbey Theatre. In 1910, Yeats described his own preference for drama in "The Tragic Theatre":

Irish University Review, 2017

This essay explores Irish social memories of fasting and hunger by reading works by James Clarenc... more This essay explores Irish social memories of fasting and hunger by reading works by James Clarence Mangan, Speranza (Lady Wilde), W.B. Yeats, and three folk stories recorded in the Schools Collection of the National Folklore Archive. In Famine lyric poetry about hunger and dreams, listeners appear indicted by hungry voices that become increasingly close to the reader. Folk stories both remember the Famine and recall the dynamics of hospitality and fasting in medieval Irish texts, where the Middle Irish word troscud suggests fasting against something or someone, unlike spiritual fasting, óine, which implies an emptying. Focussing on dreams of the hungry, these works indicate how hospitality and fasting entwine in Ireland's social memory of hunger.

Essays on James Clarence Mangan, 2014

For well over a century after James Clarence Mangan’s death, scholars and writers recalled his di... more For well over a century after James Clarence Mangan’s death, scholars and writers recalled his difficult life when explicating his work, or more fancifully treated him as a man out of time, living in the nineteenth century but existing in, or haunted by, ancient Ireland. This aspect of his affect has been a consistent theme in descriptions of him — fifty-five years after Mangan’s death, James Joyce remarked that Mangan had appeared as if doing ‘penance for some ancient sin’.1 This sense of recuperating antiquity was also very much a concern of his own time. Ancient Ireland drew Mangan, as it did many antiquarians, historians and nascent cultural nationalists throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. At the outset of his career, Mangan wrote for the Dublin Penny Journal, begun by scholar George Petrie and writer and clergyman Caesar Otway in 1832 to educate the public on Irish antiquities. In his first piece (15 September 1832), Mangan asserted his ‘intention of entering the MINE of ancient Irish literature, and bring out from the obscurity of oblivion those treasures of intellect and genius and antiquarian curiosity which are there to be found’.2 Eight years later, he began to edit a five-part series on ‘Ancient Irish Literature’ in the Irish Penny Journal, for which he produced some of his best-known translations of Irish poems, including ‘The Woman of Three Cows’, and ‘Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan’, as well as a fairly faithful version of a Fenian tale, ‘Bodach an Chota-Lachtna, or the Clown with the Grey Coat’.

The Comparatist, 1996

Critics usually regard James Stephens as one of the most whimsical and entertaining of the modern... more Critics usually regard James Stephens as one of the most whimsical and entertaining of the modernist Irish writers. Consequently, his writings are rarely read for their social and national impUcations. While whimsy certainly comprises much of his poetry and prose writings,1 a good portion of Stephens's work, particularly his later short stories, portrays social reaUties of early twentieth-century Ireland. In these stories Stephens's characters struggle against poverty, unemployment and class subjugation amidst tropes of Indian and Irish mythology. Throughout his career, Stephens wove myth into reahstic stories seeking to construct narratives of the emerging Irish nation. These narratives borrow heavily not only from versions of Irish myth, but also from OrientaUst versions of "Eastern" philosophy and mythology. Stephens used these mythological and philosophical tropes to represent Ireland's present in hopes of writing Ireland's national narrative. In this respect, his works provide a complex and specificaUy Irish answer to Homi K. Bhabha's rhetorical question: "How does one write the nation's modernity as the event of the everyday and the advent of the epochal?" ("DissemiNation" 293).

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Writers and thinkers during Ireland's Celtic Revival in the early twentieth century borrowed idea... more Writers and thinkers during Ireland's Celtic Revival in the early twentieth century borrowed ideas and forms from India and other colonised cultures in the 'orient'. Such imagined affinities between Ireland and Asia had been hallmarks of Irish orientalism for centuries. To establish a modem and national Irish culture, Irish revivalists wanted Ireland to both 'return to her fountains' and 'copy the East', to paraphrase James Stephens and quote W.B. Yeats (Yeats 228). 1 Such goals signal two impulses of the revival, identified with Celticism and Irish orientalism, as I have argued elsewhere. 2 In exploring the imagined links between Ireland and India, two cultures that long existed on the borders of European empires, Irish revivalists often embraced theosophy's quasiracial theories, which resembled the speculative work of antiquarians in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, which sought to prove an oriental origin for the Celts. They rewrote this centuries-old narrative by asserting that both cultures could be invigorated by re-establishing an ancient east-west spiritual connection.

New Hibernia Review, 2007

This research uses digital tools including geospatial, timeline, and chart programs to explore th... more This research uses digital tools including geospatial, timeline, and chart programs to explore the more than 1,200 recorded hunger strikes that took place in British prisons during that span. The primary purpose of the project is to trace instances of hunger strikes over time and space. By viewing large sets of data in this fashion, viewers can identify trends across both time and location much more easily than by relying on the textual records from the Home Office. The project also explores some details about the strikes that the records reveal. For each year of the official record we present data on reasons for the strikes, methods of force feeding, and length of strikes. This project sheds light on some of the many challenges and opportunities that digital applications can offer the humanities. One challenge is how to present data in a way that is clear, accessible, and thought-provoking without overwhelming viewers with complex displays. A dominant question of the project has be...

New Hibernia Review, 2016

's interest in playwrights tends toward the poetic. In 1998 she wrote that "there are poets of th... more 's interest in playwrights tends toward the poetic. In 1998 she wrote that "there are poets of the theatre and there are prose writers of the theatre. The ones who interest me are the poets of the theatre." 1 She also has stated directly that she prefers poetry to other genres, and two of her plays, By the Bog of Cats (1998) and Woman and Scarecrow (2006), specifically turn on the concerns of lyric poetry. 2 These plays are not lyric dramas in the sense that the term is applied to opera and musical theater-although Carr translated the libretto for Verdi's Rigoletto for a 2015 production in Dublin. Rather, these two plays are lyrical in the sense that they borrow from poetic form and participate within a tradition of lyrical lament, particularly those that circle around lost mothers. Lyrical poetry has played an outsized role in Irish literature, from medieval verse in Irish to contemporary poetry that employs what Eric Falci has termed the "counterlyric," a dynamic that both critiques and furthers lyric poetry's possibilities. 3 The lyric's influence on Irish drama has also been large, stemming from W.B. Yeats's influence on the Abbey Theatre. In 1910, Yeats described his own preference for drama in "The Tragic Theatre":

Irish University Review, 2017

This essay explores Irish social memories of fasting and hunger by reading works by James Clarenc... more This essay explores Irish social memories of fasting and hunger by reading works by James Clarence Mangan, Speranza (Lady Wilde), W.B. Yeats, and three folk stories recorded in the Schools Collection of the National Folklore Archive. In Famine lyric poetry about hunger and dreams, listeners appear indicted by hungry voices that become increasingly close to the reader. Folk stories both remember the Famine and recall the dynamics of hospitality and fasting in medieval Irish texts, where the Middle Irish word troscud suggests fasting against something or someone, unlike spiritual fasting, óine, which implies an emptying. Focussing on dreams of the hungry, these works indicate how hospitality and fasting entwine in Ireland's social memory of hunger.

Essays on James Clarence Mangan, 2014

For well over a century after James Clarence Mangan’s death, scholars and writers recalled his di... more For well over a century after James Clarence Mangan’s death, scholars and writers recalled his difficult life when explicating his work, or more fancifully treated him as a man out of time, living in the nineteenth century but existing in, or haunted by, ancient Ireland. This aspect of his affect has been a consistent theme in descriptions of him — fifty-five years after Mangan’s death, James Joyce remarked that Mangan had appeared as if doing ‘penance for some ancient sin’.1 This sense of recuperating antiquity was also very much a concern of his own time. Ancient Ireland drew Mangan, as it did many antiquarians, historians and nascent cultural nationalists throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. At the outset of his career, Mangan wrote for the Dublin Penny Journal, begun by scholar George Petrie and writer and clergyman Caesar Otway in 1832 to educate the public on Irish antiquities. In his first piece (15 September 1832), Mangan asserted his ‘intention of entering the MINE of ancient Irish literature, and bring out from the obscurity of oblivion those treasures of intellect and genius and antiquarian curiosity which are there to be found’.2 Eight years later, he began to edit a five-part series on ‘Ancient Irish Literature’ in the Irish Penny Journal, for which he produced some of his best-known translations of Irish poems, including ‘The Woman of Three Cows’, and ‘Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan’, as well as a fairly faithful version of a Fenian tale, ‘Bodach an Chota-Lachtna, or the Clown with the Grey Coat’.

The Comparatist, 1996

Critics usually regard James Stephens as one of the most whimsical and entertaining of the modern... more Critics usually regard James Stephens as one of the most whimsical and entertaining of the modernist Irish writers. Consequently, his writings are rarely read for their social and national impUcations. While whimsy certainly comprises much of his poetry and prose writings,1 a good portion of Stephens's work, particularly his later short stories, portrays social reaUties of early twentieth-century Ireland. In these stories Stephens's characters struggle against poverty, unemployment and class subjugation amidst tropes of Indian and Irish mythology. Throughout his career, Stephens wove myth into reahstic stories seeking to construct narratives of the emerging Irish nation. These narratives borrow heavily not only from versions of Irish myth, but also from OrientaUst versions of "Eastern" philosophy and mythology. Stephens used these mythological and philosophical tropes to represent Ireland's present in hopes of writing Ireland's national narrative. In this respect, his works provide a complex and specificaUy Irish answer to Homi K. Bhabha's rhetorical question: "How does one write the nation's modernity as the event of the everyday and the advent of the epochal?" ("DissemiNation" 293).

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Writers and thinkers during Ireland's Celtic Revival in the early twentieth century borrowed idea... more Writers and thinkers during Ireland's Celtic Revival in the early twentieth century borrowed ideas and forms from India and other colonised cultures in the 'orient'. Such imagined affinities between Ireland and Asia had been hallmarks of Irish orientalism for centuries. To establish a modem and national Irish culture, Irish revivalists wanted Ireland to both 'return to her fountains' and 'copy the East', to paraphrase James Stephens and quote W.B. Yeats (Yeats 228). 1 Such goals signal two impulses of the revival, identified with Celticism and Irish orientalism, as I have argued elsewhere. 2 In exploring the imagined links between Ireland and India, two cultures that long existed on the borders of European empires, Irish revivalists often embraced theosophy's quasiracial theories, which resembled the speculative work of antiquarians in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, which sought to prove an oriental origin for the Celts. They rewrote this centuries-old narrative by asserting that both cultures could be invigorated by re-establishing an ancient east-west spiritual connection.

Fell Hunger, 2011

Fell Hunger, Joseph Lennon's first volume of poetry, gathers a body of work from twenty years of ... more Fell Hunger, Joseph Lennon's first volume of poetry, gathers a body of work from twenty years of writing. The poems, most derived from the sonnet, reflect on living for many years with an undiagnosed illness, coeliac disease. These reflections are interlaced with childhood memories and experiences of living in NewYork City, Ireland, Italy, and elsewhere. The voice of the poems often wrestles with dualities-pain and grace; home and away; violence and hope; sickness and health; religion and disillusionment; heritage and baggage. Seeking new resolutions, the poems then offer soft imperatives of harmony, endurance, and recovery. The poems in Joseph Lennon's debut collection engage-in a deep, plainspoken, unfussed way-childhood memories (a street fight, a wild friend, an unidentified illness), offer samples of the quotidian, passing world (a woman at a bus stop, a bullet lodged in a tree, a painting by Vermeer), or celebrate the complicated reality that is family. Whether set in Ireland or America, India or Italy, the poems are alive with sharp-eyed, often elegiac, epiphanies in a universe of blessedly concrete facts, achieving, again and again, honest emotional lift-off. Eamon Grennan Joseph Lennon's intimate poems investigate "the borders that kept me from knowing / the place I am" and take the reader on a radical journey of discovery where "poison grew like grass." Illinois is conjured on a road in Ireland, and "harmonies land as cupped berries." His warm attention to the wider world around him is unflinching so the observed detail illuminates an internal state, where the body gives way to the spirit, and the line to music.These are poems of witness and illumination that urge us to "listen for what is not heard." Catherine Phil MacCarthy The poems of Fell Hunger range warmly and ruefully across the scales of place and displacement-from the American heartland to the lost "family country" of Ireland to Rapallo and Mumbai-and so doing manage to turn the genre of bildungsroman into a transnational narrative of longing and witness. This deftly assembled orchestration of sonnets and free-verse narratives offers the recognition that, while we may be "from places we do not know," such loss is also "the seed of hunger." Fell Hunger is an artful and urgent record of discovery and recovery. Daniel Tobin Fell Hunger Joseph Lennon salmonpoetry salmonpoetry 74pp €12.00 5.61