These selected essays are drawn from largely unpublished and original sources. They take for subject matter both genre and individual writers and their works, and build into a comprehensive survey that links literature and society in a unity of approach, deeply concerned with modern Ireland and the way in which it sees itself. Contents: Saxon and Celt: The Stereotypes; Thomas Moore: A Reputation; Edward Dowden: Irish Victorian; The Church of Ireland and the Climax of the Ages; Canon Sheehan and the Catholic Intellectual; Yeats, Joyce and the Irish Critical Debate; After the Revival: Se-n D'O Faol-in and Patrick Kavanagh; Some Young Doom: Beckett and the Child; Austin Clarke: Satirist; Geoffrey Taylor: A Portrait; C.S. Lewis: Irishman?; Donoghue and Us Irish; Show Me a Sign: Brian Moore and Religious Faith; Poets and Patrimony: Richard Murphy and James Simmons; A Northern Renaissance: Poets from the North of Ireland 1965-1980; Remembering Who We Are; Awakening from the Nightmare: History and Contemporary Literature; Acknowledgments; Index R