This book reconstitutes the category of 'space' as a crucial element within contemporary cultural, literary and historical studies in Ireland. The study is based on the dual premise of an explosion of interest in the category of space in modern cultural criticism and social inquiry, and the consolidation of Irish studies as a significant scholarly field across a number of institutional and intellectual contexts. Besides a methodological/theoretical introduction and extended case studies, the book includes an auto-critical dimension which extends its interest into the fields of local history and life-writing.

GERRY SMYTH is Senior Lecturer in Cultural History at Liverpool John Moores University. He is author of The Novel and the Nation: Studies in the New Irish Fiction and Decolonisation and Criticism: The Construction of Irish Literature. The latter was awarded the Michael J. Durkan Prize for the best book in Irish literature/culture by the American Conference for Irish Studies.

List of Abbreviations Aphorisms and Definitions Preface Acknowledgements Irish Cultural Studies and the Re-emergence of Spatial Analysis Space and the Irish Cultural Imagination The Location of Criticism, or, Putting the 'I' into Ireland Big Mistakes in Small Places: Internal and External Space in Seamus Deane's Reading in the Dark Show Me the Way to Go Home: Space and Place in the Music of U2 Notes Bibliography Index