For many readers, the Irish and the fantastic are synonymous. From the ancient texts and medieval illuminated manuscripts to 20th century poetry, painting, drama, stories, and novels, Irish writers and artists have found the fantastic not only congenial but necessary to their art. In his introduction to this collection of fifteen essays that focus on the fantastic in Irish literature and the arts, Donald E. Morse contends that the use of the fantastic mode has allowed Irish writers and artists to express ideas, emotions, and insights not available through the direct imitation of everyday reality. Morse argues that for the Irish, the road to insight was often through the territory of the marvelous and the fantastic rather than through literalism, rationalism, or logic. In seeking to arrive at a definition of what constitutes the fantastic, Morse looks at work by Sean O'Casey and Seamus Heaney and finds that the fantastic occurs during encounters with what is considered to be the impossible, a concept contingent upon personal beliefs. To demonstrate how the fantastic may yield new insights into human beings, their behavior, feelings, and thoughts, as well as lead to innovations in art, Morse scrutinizes Circe from James Joyce's Ulysses, probably the most famous use of the fantastic in all modern Irish literature. The works of Yeats, Field, Shelly, Synge, Beckett, Swift, Coleridge, and others are examined in incisive chapters written from the point of view of the fantastic.The four-part study begins with a section on Ancient Knowledge and the Fantastic in which four chapters discuss Yeats's plays; The Figure of the Mermaid in Irish Legend and Poetry; Ghosts in Irish Drama; and The Only Jealousy of Emer. In a section devoted to Irish theatre, music, and painting, the paintings of Jack B. Yeats are examined for fantastic content and Peter Egri finds parallels between the work of John Field and Chopin, Shelly, and Turner. The plays of Synge, O'Casey, Beckett, and Thomas Murphy are the subject of Part III. The final section considers The Occult, Fantasy, and Phantasmagoria in Swift, Dunsany, Joyce, and Yeats. The coeditors' afterword, Looking Backward, Looking Ahead, concludes the volume which also contains a select bibliography on the fantastic. Generalists in literature or the arts, students and scholars of Irish Studies and the fantastic in the arts, as well as those enamored of things Irish will find this collection resonant with rich insights into the genre.

This collection of 15 essays focuses on the fantastic in Irish literature and the arts, showing how the use of the fantastic mode has allowed Irish writers and artists to express ideas, emotions, and insights not available through imitation of everyday reality. The works of Yeats, Field, Shelly, Synge, Beckett, Swift, Coleridge, and others are examined.

"More Real Than Reality": An Introduction to the Fantastic in Irish Literature and the Arts by Donald E. MorseAncient Knowledge and the FantasticMyth and the Fantastic: The Example of W. B. Yeats's Plays by Csilla BerthaSiren or Victim: The Mermaid in Irish Legend and Poetry by Maureen MurphyGhosts in Irish Drama by Anthony Roche"The Only Jealousy of Emer": Recycling the Elements by Bettina KnappThe Fantastic and Irish Arts: Theatre, Music, and PaintingsIrish Drama and the Fantastic by Christopher Murray"My Unshatterable Friend of Clay": Fantasy in the Paintings of Jack B. Yeats by Hilary PyleJohn Field's Imaginative Achievement: Parallels with Chopin, Shelley, and Turner by Peter EgriUses of the Fantastic by Irish PlaywrightsInterrogating Boundaries: Fantasy in the Plays of J. M. Synge by Toni O'Brien JohnsonThe Uses of the Fantastic in the Later Plays of Sean O'Casey by Jurgen Kamm"Fidelity to Failure": Time and the Fantastic in Samuel Beckett's Early Plays by Donald E. MorseThomas Murphy's Psychological Explorations by Csilla BerthaThe Occult, Fantasy, and Phantasmagoria in Swift, Dunsany, Joyce, and YeatsSwift and Fantasy by C. N. ManloveLord Dunsany: The Geography of the Gods by Vernon HylesThe Fantastic in James Joyce's Ulysses: Representational Strategies in "Circe" and "Penelope" by Aladar SarbuThe Displacement of the Real: From Coleridgean Fancy to Yeats's Vision and Beyond by Joseph SwannAfterword: Looking Backward, Looking Ahead: The Study of the Fantastic in Irish Literature and the Arts by Donald E. Morse and Csilla BerthaSelect Bibliography on the FantasticIndex