After Yeats and Joyce - Neil Corcoran

Irish literature after Yeats and Joyce, from the 1920s onwards, includes texts which have been the subject of much contention.
For a start how should Irish literature be defined: as works which have been written in Irish or as works written in Englsih by the Irish?
It is a period in which ideas of Ireland-of people, community, and nation-have been both created and reflected, and in which conceptions of a distinct Irish identity have beenarticulated, defended, and challenged; a period which has its origins in a time of intense political turmoil.
`after Yeats and Joyce' also suggests the immense influence of these two writers on the style, stances, and preoccupations of twentieth-century Irish literature.
Neil Corcoran focuses his chapter on various themessuch as `the Big House', the rural and provincial, with reference to authors from Kinsella and Beckett to William Trevor, Seamus Heaney, and Mary Lavin, providing a lucid and far-reaching introduction to modern Irish writing.