The Cambridge Companion to Modern Irish Culture (Cambridge Companions to Culture) Review

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The Cambridge Companion to Modern Irish Culture (Cambridge Companions to Culture) ReviewThis collection of introductory essays surveying cultural and social topics over the 20th century in Ireland makes for stimulating and accessible reading. It's a pleasure to find arguments that reach out to the educated reader, neither with too much simplicity nor too little clarity. The chapters give enough detail for you to become intrigued, but not so much as to become dull. This would be an excellent resource if you already know something about some of the facets of Irish identity as expressed through its creations, but you also need to learn more about areas perhaps less familiar to you.
My favorite essays, perhaps inevitably, were on the topics already somewhat familiar to me, so I confess my bias. Other reviewers would doubtless be able to weigh in better than I about architecture, say, or the visual arts, for instance. In the areas I felt more comfortable with before perusing the chapters, I always found cogent suggestions for further reading on the topic, and a feel for the major issues about which experts in that field debated and concurred upon as essential.
Tom Inglis on religion and identity within the state applies Pierre Bourdieu's concept of an Irish Catholic "habitus" to good effect; Luke Gibbons, as often in his writing, summarizes much about Irish film within an impressively concise presentation. Alan Bairner told me new information about sport, and how Irish-British ties as well as the presumed distinctions characterize much of the culture wrapped up in football at present. On folklore, Diarmuid O Giollain condenses his knowledge so a beginner can comprehend this challenging area of study. Bernard O'Donoghue on poetry and Padraigin Riggs (with Norman Vance) on the Irish-language prose fiction both emphasize admirably and convincingly the need for the Irish-language authors to be taken as seriously as the literature in English produced by Irish over the past century, and draw attention to the resurgences of recent decades in Gaelic verse and fiction.
A handsomely presented volume, graced with a well-chosen cover painting, an efficient introduction, readable typefaces, and notes appended to each chapter along with suggested further reading: all these features make this a welcome contribution to accessible, pithy, and insightful scholarship on a couple dozen aspects of what Irish culture has grown into over the past hundred years.
I did dock this one star, unfortunately, for the annoyingly frequent typographical and spelling errors, which I noticed most of all in the chapter on film. A press the caliber of Cambridge can and should afford to do much more thorough editing of a book that's meant to be a standard work for many newcomers to these fields who may be misled by such frequent errors into hunting down the wrong title of a book or film.The Cambridge Companion to Modern Irish Culture (Cambridge Companions to Culture) OverviewThis Companion provides an authoritative introduction to the historical, social and stylistic complexities of modern Irish culture. It introduces Irish culture in its broadest sense and guides the reader through the cultural and theoretical debates that inform our understanding of modern Ireland. The range of topics covered by the contributors demonstrates a comprehensive understanding of Irish culture and the development of modern Ireland.

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