Between Shadows: Modern Irish Writing and Culture by John Wilson Foster (review)

John Wilson Foster is the well-known author of numerous influential books within Irish literary and cultural studies. His Colonial Consequences was key in the earlier waves of writing on the Irish colonial context.¹ Fictions of the Irish Literary Revival, along with the highly impressive Irish Novels 1890-1940, established Foster as an expert on Irish fiction throughout a wide period—though his other books, including one on Seamus Heaney, demonstrate that his range extends far beyond one particular genre.² The magisterial Nature In Ireland, which Foster edited and to which he contributed an amazing series of essays, could be seen as breaking ground for what has become Irish ecocriticism.³ Foster’s range, in other words, has always been impressive and has remained so over the course of several decades.

This volume features a series of essays, some of which have been published separately in journals but most of which were delivered as lectures over a period of sixteen years. Foster envisioned Between Shadows as a companion piece for Colonial Consequences, which similarly documents the state of Irish studies through an examination of a wide array of authors, events, and themes. The studies reflect Foster’s ongoing commitment to several arenas: reconsiderations of the Irish Literary Revival, including both its central players and more minor ones; analyses of Irish nationalism and partisan positions at several times and through the lenses of a variety of literary figures; writing that, in a broad sense, considers nature and science in various Irish contexts; and more recent authors.

In the lovely “The Autocartography of Tim Robinson,” Foster describes “genuine essayists” who are “by definition versatile wielders of the pen,” noting that Robinson’s “peculiar versatility is also a challenge to our reception of his work” (119). Some of this observation surely applies to Foster himself. There is a genuine facility with language here, the ability to avoid the jargon that has come to define the field of English studies and to approach the topic at hand with an openness that allows for connections to be made that travel across cultures and times. It is, however, difficult to classify a book such as this one, because it covers so much and, in some ways, also speaks to particular moments so directly, as is the case with essays covering the Celtic Tiger or the Northern Irish Peace Process; this also means that some essays can feel dated. Foster as good as acknowledges this in his preface. Even considering that, though, the essays remain insightful.

Of the pieces that are not time-specific, there are some that stood out for this reader as a continuation of the work done in Nature In Ireland: wonderful studies on “The Islandman,” the previously mentioned chapter on Robinson, another on “Science and Oscar Wilde,” and one on “Strangford Lough and its Writers.” Foster’s own linguistic strengths are showcased here in the attention to landscape and subtle arguments about the ways in which environments both influence and are represented by authors. Several essays on W. B. Yeats throughout the volume demonstrate Foster’s ongoing capacity to surprise with readings that provide new insight. Fascinating sections within “Getting the North: Yeats and Northern Nationalism” assess critics like Seamus Deane, Denis Donoghue, and Heaney and make us think of the biases always present in our work. Foster’s ongoing concern with Ulster and its relationship to Irish studies is a strong presence throughout the collection. The one essay focused on Joyce and delivered as a lecture in Belfast for the Bloomsday centenary demonstrates Foster’s knowledge of the Irish author but is more valuable as an analysis of Bloomsday kitsch and its meaning for Dublin and Irish tourism more broadly.

One wonders how much longer such collections will be published. That Foster remains an important critic in an Irish-studies context is indisputable, but it is not often that academic presses will gather the unpublished essays of...