Essays on James Clarence Mangan

"This volume explores the extraordinary literary achievement of James Clarence Mangan (1803-1849), increasingly recognized as one of the most important Irish writers of the nineteenth century, and a crucial influence on WB Yeats and James Joyce. It is the first collection of essays to focus on Mangan, and features articles by leading scholars in the field, including David Lloyd, as well as contributions by acclaimed contemporary writers, Paul Muldoon and Ciaran Carson. The collection expands existing fields of debate - translation, the supernatural, intertexuality, nationalism, romanticism - and introduces new ones: Mangan's afterlife in the English literary canon, cosmopolitanism and Weltliteratur, antiquity and futurity, nineteenth-century spiritualism and magical thinking. 'The Man in the Cloak', one of Mangan's favourite pseudonyms, is still a resonant soubriquet for a writer who has largely eluded critical attention, and this volume restores him to his proper place in European and British, as well as Irish literary history"--