IRELAND IN BRIEF

Click here to download a PDF booklet which provides a general overview of Ireland’s political, economic and cultural life.

GEORGE ORWELL'S ANIMAL FARM

Here you can read George Orwell's novel, published in 1945.

Animal Farm is an allegory, which is a story in which concrete and specific characters and situations stand for other characters and situations so as to make a point about them. The book reflects events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and then on into the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union.

The setting of Animal Farm is a dystopia, which is an imagined world that is far worse than our own, as opposed to a utopia, which is an ideal place or state. Other dystopian novels include Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, and George Orwell's own 1984.

Here you can find a detailed analysis of this novel.

A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN

"I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman."

Virginia Woolf

REVISING VIRGINIA WOOLF

Virginia Woolf 

The Modernist Lab  -  Virginia Woolf 

Mrs Dalloway

To the Lighthouse

Orlando 

A Room of One's Own

"Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible."

Virginia Woolf

THE AGE OF ANXIETY

The Modern Age 

Analysing  the "Age of Anxiety"

The Interwar Years

Modern Literature (1900 - 1961)

WILFRED OWEN

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen was born 18 March 1893 in Oswestry, Shropshire. After school he became a teaching assistant and in 1913 went to France for two years to work as a language tutor. He began writing poetry as a teenager.

In 1915 he returned to England to enlist in the army and was commissioned into the Manchester Regiment. After spending the remainder of the year training in England, he left for the western front early in January 1917. After experiencing heavy fighting, he was diagnosed with shellshock. He was evacuated to England and arrived at Craiglockhart War Hospital near Edinburgh in June. There he met the poet Siegfried Sassoon, who already had a reputation as a poet and shared Owen's views. Sassoon agreed to look over Owen's poems and gave him encouragement. 

Reading Sassoon's poems and discussing his work with Sassoon revolutionised Owen's style and his conception of poetry. He returned to France in August 1918 and in October was awarded the Military Cross for bravery. On 4 November 1918 he was killed while attempting to lead his men across the Sambre canal at Ors, France. The news of his death reached his parents on 11 November, Armistice Day.

Edited by Sassoon and published in 1920, Owen's single volume of poems contain some of the most heartbreaking English poetry of World War I, including "Dulce et Decorum Est" and "Anthemfor Doomed Youth".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/owen_wilfred.shtml

https://owlcation.com/humanities/Analysis-of-Poem-Dulce-et-Decorum-Est-by-Wilfred-Owen

Here you can find a detailed analysis of the poem "Dulce et Decorum Est".

THE WAR POETS

Here you can find a PDF presentation about the War Poets.

Find out more about poetry in World War One: http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/z38rq6f

THE MODERN AGE - THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Here you can find an overview of the 20th century.

Overview of World War I 

World War I

The Great Depression

World War II
Overview of the Post-War Era 

MAY

"Sweet May hath come to love us,

Flowers, trees, their blossoms don;

And through the blue heavens above us

The very clouds move on."

Heinrich Heine, Book of Songs