This volume sets out to investigate how various forms of authority in Irish culture and history have been challenged and transformed by a crisis situation. In literature and the arts, a reappraisal of the authority of canonical authors - and also of traditional forms, paradigms and critical discourses - principally revolves around intertextuality and rewriting, as well as the wider crisis of (authoritative) representation. What is the authority of an author, of a text, of literature itself? How do works of fiction represent, generate or resolve crises on their own aesthetic, stylistic and representational terms? The Irish Republic has faced a number of serious crises and challenges since it came into existence. In recent years, the collapse of the Celtic Tiger has acted as a catalyst for change, revealing various structures of political, religious and economic authority giving way under pressure. In Northern Ireland, the Good Friday Agreement has led to major developments as new authorities endowed with legislative and executive powers have been set up. In its focus on the subject of authority and crisis in Ireland, this book opens up a rich and varied field of investigation.

Carine Berbéri is Senior Lecturer in British Studies at the University of Tours. Her research interests and publications are principally in the field of British politics, with a particular emphasis on the relationship between Britain and Europe. She is also working on the impact of British devolution and its links with European integration issues. Martine Pelletier is Senior Lecturer in English and Irish Studies at the University of Tours. She has published widely on Brian Friel, Field Day and contemporary Irish and Northern Irish theatre. She wrote the prefaces to Alain Delahaye's recent French translations of Brian Friel's plays.

Contents: Nicholas Grene: Irish English as a Literary Language: Authority and Subversion – Brigitte Bastiat/Frank Healy: by Owen McCafferty. From Written Translation to Stage Interpretation – Bertrand Cardin: Authorities in Crisis and Intertextual Practice: The Example of Colum McCann’s – Audrey Robitaillié: «Come Away, Stolen Child»: Colum McCann’s and Keith Donohue’s New Readings of the Yeatsian Motif – Mehdi Ghassemi: Authorial and Perceptual Crises in John Banville’s – Virginie Girel-Pietka: Looking for Oneself in Denis Johnston’s Plays: Authorities in Crisis and Self-Authorship – Chantal Dessaint: «Suffer the little children …»: Éilís Ní Dhuibhne’s Strategies of Subversion – Mathew D. Staunton/Nathalie Sebbane: Authority and Child Abuse in Ireland: Rethinking History in a Hostile Field – Valerie Peyronel: The Banking Crisis in Ireland and its Resolution: Authority(ies) in Question? – Marie-Violaine Louvet: Challenging the Authority of the Irish State on the Question of the Middle East: The Two Gaza Flotillas of May 2010 and November 2011 – Michel Savaric: The IRA and ‘Civil Administration’: A Challenge to the Authority of the State? – Fabrice Mourlon: The Crisis of Authority in – Claire Dubois: «Through Darkest Obstruction»: Challenging the British Representation of Ireland (1880-1910) – Ciaran Brady: An Old Kind of History: The Anglo-Irish Writing of Irish History, 1840-1910.