Poetry and Science: William Wordsworth and his Irish Friends William Rowan Hamilton and Francis Beaufort Edgeworth, c. 1829

Romanticism ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-101
Author(s):  
Brandon C. Yen
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
William Wordsworth ◽  
Trinity College ◽  
Bodleian Library ◽  
Trinity College Dublin ◽  
The Relationship

Through hitherto neglected manuscripts at Trinity College Dublin, the Bodleian Library, and the Wordsworth Trust, this paper explores the relationship between William Wordsworth and his Irish friends William Rowan Hamilton and Francis Beaufort Edgeworth around 1829. It details the debates about poetry and science between Hamilton (Professor of Astronomy at Trinity College Dublin and Royal Astronomer of Ireland) and Edgeworth (the novelist Maria Edgeworth's half-brother), in which Wordsworth was embroiled when he visited Ireland in the autumn of 1829. By examining a variety of documents including letters, poems, lectures, and memoirs, a fragment of literary history may be restored and a clearer understanding may be reached of the tensions between poetry and science in Wordsworth's poetry, particularly in The Excursion, and of the Irish provenance of a memorable passage in ‘On the Power of Sound’.

Women' Theatre in Ireland

1991 ◽  
Vol 7 (28) ◽  
pp. 353-360 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Wilmer
Keyword(s):  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Samuel Beckett ◽  
Trinity College ◽  
Present Situation ◽  
International Federation ◽  
Women Directors ◽  
Feminist Theatre ◽  
Trinity College Dublin ◽  
Women's Theatre ◽  
The Relationship

So close was the relationship between women and the Irish literary and theatrical renaissance that the severely diminished feminist role in contemporary Irish cultural and theatrical life contrasts all the more revealingly with the early achievements. In this article, which is an expanded version of a paper given at the 1990 conference of the International Federation for Theatre Research at Glasgow University, Steve Wilmer etches in the historical perspective, notably the significance of women's writing to the nationalist as well as the suffragist movement, and outlines the present situation, in which the solid advances being made by women directors and administrators are only slowly being reflected in an increase in women's theatre writing and support for feminist theatre groups, let alone the assumption of real theatrical power. Steve Wilmer teaches in the Samuel Beckett Centre at Trinity College Dublin, and is the author of several plays, including Scenes from Soweto.

The originality of the Old English gloss of the Vespasian Psalter and its relation to the gloss of the Junius Psalter

1996 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 37-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phillip Pulsiano
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Direct Relationship ◽  
Trinity College ◽  
British Library ◽  
Bodleian Library ◽  
Extended Study ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Full Form ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Relationship

In a brief discussion of the Vespasian Psalter in 1898, Albert S. Cook offered a statement that set the tone for subsequent debate about the relationship between the Old English gloss of the Vespasian Psalter (A = London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian A. i) and that of the junius Psalter (B = Oxford, Bodleian Library, junius 27): ‘It seems not improbable that it [i.e. the gloss to the Vespasian Psalter] is the original from which all later Old English glosses on the Psalms have been derived, undergoing in the process such modifications as were due to the language of the particular dialect or epoch.’ With regard to the Junius gloss specifically, Cook printed the text of Psalm XCIX [C] from the Vespasian Psalter, which he collated with the Junius, Cambridge (C = Cambridge, University Library, Ff. 1.23), Regius (D = London, British Library, Royal 2. B.V), and Eadwine (E = Cambridge, Trinity College R. 17.1) psalters; he concluded that ‘B stands nearest to A, but is carelessly written, and changes Anglian peculiarities in the direction of West Saxon (in to on, all to eall, &c.) while retaining, in general, a comparatively early and Anglian cast (weotað, scep, leswe, &c.)’. Although Otto Heinzel, writing in 1926, disagreed with Cook's assertion that the Vespasian gloss was the source from which all other psalters ultimately derived their glosses, he reiterated, after a fashion, the idea that the Junius gloss is related to that of the Vespasian Psalter, although, like Cook, he did not argue for a direct relationship between these two works. In Heinzel's stemma, from the Urtext*0 derive *α, which stands as the model for B, and *β, which in turn stands as the model for both A and C. The stemma, in its full form, taking the Dtype (Regius Psalter) tradition into account, has justly been termed ‘fanciful’ by Kenneth Sisam. The relationship between the glosses in these two psalters formed the subject of an extended study by Uno Lindelöf published in 1901.

Racine Lighting Beckett

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-242
Author(s):  
Cal Revely-Calder
Keyword(s):  
Samuel Beckett ◽  
Trinity College ◽  
Trinity College Dublin ◽  
The Trinity

Critics have recently begun to pay attention to the influence Jean Racine's plays had on the work of Samuel Beckett, noting his 1930–31 lectures at Trinity College Dublin, and echoes of Racine in early texts such as Murphy (1938). This essay suggests that as well as the Trinity lectures, Beckett's later re-reading of Racine (in 1956) can be seen as fundamentally influential on his drama. There are moments of direct allusion to Racine's work, as in Oh les beaux jours (1963), where the echoes are easily discernible; but I suggest that soon, in particular with Come and Go (1965), the characteristics of a distinctly Racinian stagecraft become more subtly apparent, in what Danièle de Ruyter has called ‘choix plus spécifiquement théâtraux’: pared-down lighting, carefully-crafted entries and exits, and visual tableaux made increasingly difficult to read. Through an account of Racine's dramaturgy, and the ways in which he structures bodily motion and theatrical talk, I suggest that Beckett's post-1956 drama can be better understood, as stage-spectacles, in the light of Racine's plays; both writers give us, in Myriam Jeantroux's phrase, the complicated spectacle of ‘un lieu à la fois désert et clôturé’. As spectators to Beckett's drama, by keeping Racine in mind we can come to understand better the limitations of that spectatorship, and how the later plays trouble our ability to see – and interpret – the figures that move before us.

Are We Doing Diversity Justice? A Critical Exchange

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 112-119
Author(s):  
Chiamaka Enyi-Amadi ◽  
Emma Penney
Keyword(s):  
Trinity College ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
Irish Literature ◽  
Critical Race ◽  
Roundtable Discussion ◽  
Literary Value ◽  
Irish Studies ◽  
Trinity College Dublin ◽  
Race Analysis

This critical exchange is based on a conversation between the authors which took place during the Irish University Review Roundtable Discussion: Displacing the Canon (2019 IASIL Conference, Trinity College Dublin). As authors we give first-hand accounts of our experience writing, editing, and teaching in Ireland, attempting to draw out concerns we have for the future of Irish literature and Irish Studies that specifically relate to race. The conversation here suggests that race directly impacts what we consider valuable in our literary culture. We both insist on decentring universalism as a governing literary critical concept and insist on the urgent application of critical race analysis to the construction of literary value systems in Ireland.

Samuel Beckett's Debt to Aristotle: Cosmology, Syllogism, Space, Time

2010 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 181-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Cordingley
Keyword(s):  
Trinity College ◽  
Space Time ◽  
Formal Logic ◽  
Trinity College Dublin ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Creative Transformation ◽  
Cosmic Order

This essay argues for the presence of Aristotelian ideas of cosmic order, syllogism, space and time in Beckett's . It accounts for how such ideas impact upon the novel's 'I' as he attempts to offer a philosophical 'solution' to his predicament in an underworld divorced from the revolving heavens. Beckett's study of formal logic as a student at Trinity College, Dublin and his private study of philosophy in 1932 is examined in this light; particularly his “Philosophy Notes,” along with some possible further sources for his knowledge. The essay then reveals a creative transformation of Aristotelian ideas in which led to formal innovations, such as the continuous present of its narrative.

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