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Outputs (34)

On The Scale Of Art And The Aesthetics Of Difficulty- Rereading 'Lapis Lazuli' As Ecological Critique (2024)
Book Chapter
Sheils, B. (in press). On The Scale Of Art And The Aesthetics Of Difficulty- Rereading 'Lapis Lazuli' As Ecological Critique. In C. I. Armstrong, A. Paterson, & T. Walker (Eds.), W.B. Yeats and the Arts. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press

In mid-1936, while writing ‘Lapis Lazuli’, W. B. Yeats was finalising his controversial selections for The Oxford Book of Modern Verse (1936). He was also pronouncing upon a significant generational trend towards ‘difficult’ poetry. As he suggested i... Read More about On The Scale Of Art And The Aesthetics Of Difficulty- Rereading 'Lapis Lazuli' As Ecological Critique.

Electric Signs and Echo Chambers: the Stupidity of Affect in Modern Irish Literature (2023)
Book Chapter
Sheils, B. (2023). Electric Signs and Echo Chambers: the Stupidity of Affect in Modern Irish Literature. In M. Kelleher, & J. O'Sullivan (Eds.), Technology in Irish Literature and Culture (83-98). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009182881.007

Ireland was in a rush to embrace electrification in the 1930s and 1940s, as it was digitalisation in the post-Celtic Tiger age of Yahoo and Google. In the face of this state-led dedication to light and currency, Irish literature has consistently foun... Read More about Electric Signs and Echo Chambers: the Stupidity of Affect in Modern Irish Literature.

The Meteorological Device: the daily weather forecast, literary modernism and the productions of anxiety (2022)
Journal Article
Sheils, B. (in press). The Meteorological Device: the daily weather forecast, literary modernism and the productions of anxiety. Modernism/modernity,

Modernist studies as the institutionalization of avant-garde culture– a repository for exciting futures – has a peculiar and self-conscious affinity to the devices of the modern weather forecast. Consider its structuring paradox: on the one hand, rup... Read More about The Meteorological Device: the daily weather forecast, literary modernism and the productions of anxiety.

Style Interminable: the autofictional object of the Humanities in works by Brigid Brophy and Ben Lerner (2022)
Journal Article
Sheils, B. (2022). Style Interminable: the autofictional object of the Humanities in works by Brigid Brophy and Ben Lerner. Textual Practice, 36(4), 518-541. https://doi.org/10.1080/0950236x.2022.2055284

Style emerged into discursive prominence in nineteenth-century Europe at the same time as the classical symptoms of hysteria were given new impetus by neurologists and psychoanalysts. Later, when the Post-War architecture of late capitalism seemed to... Read More about Style Interminable: the autofictional object of the Humanities in works by Brigid Brophy and Ben Lerner.

Introduction: The Contemporary Problem of Style (2022)
Journal Article
Robinson, R., & Sheils, B. (2022). Introduction: The Contemporary Problem of Style. Textual Practice, 36(4), 473-500. https://doi.org/10.1080/0950236x.2022.2030510

This essay sets the parameters of this special issue on the contemporary problem of style. Noting that the critical term style has returned to discursive prominence in recent years, the introduction explores the peculiarity of its status in literary... Read More about Introduction: The Contemporary Problem of Style.

Irish Skin: the Epidermiology of Modernism (2021)
Book Chapter
Sheils, B. (2021). Irish Skin: the Epidermiology of Modernism. In P. Fagan, J. Greaney, & T. Radak (Eds.), Irish Modernisms: Gaps, Conjectures, Possibilities (87-102). Bloomsbury

Institutions and Elegies: viewing the dead in W.B. Yeats and John Wieners (2020)
Book Chapter
Sheils, B., & Walsh, J. (2020). Institutions and Elegies: viewing the dead in W.B. Yeats and John Wieners. In W. Wang, D. Jerrigan, & N. Murphy (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Death and Literature (190-206). Routledge

In this chapter we ask how poetic elegy encodes the modern institutional spaces of dying. But rather than visiting the hospital ward, we consider this at one remove, from the perspective of another modern institution where the aesthetic, natural-scie... Read More about Institutions and Elegies: viewing the dead in W.B. Yeats and John Wieners.

Introduction: Shame and Modern Writing (2018)
Book Chapter
Sheils, B., & Walsh, J. (2018). Introduction: Shame and Modern Writing. In B. Sheils, & J. Walsh (Eds.), Shame and modern writing (1-33). Routledge

Narcissism, Melancholia and the Subject of Community (2017)
Book
Sheils, B., & Walsh, J. (Eds.). (2017). Narcissism, Melancholia and the Subject of Community. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63829-4

This book brings together the work of scholars and writer-practitioners of psychoanalysis to consider the legacy of two of Sigmund Freud's most important metapsychological papers: 'On Narcissism: An Introduction' (1914) and 'Mourning and Melancholia'... Read More about Narcissism, Melancholia and the Subject of Community.

Introduction: Narcissism, Melancholia and the Subject of Community (2017)
Book Chapter
Sheils, B., & Walsh, J. (2017). Introduction: Narcissism, Melancholia and the Subject of Community. In B. Sheils, & J. Walsh (Eds.), Narcissism, melancholia and the subject of community (1-40). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63829-4_1

Sigmund Freud’s twin papers, ‘On Narcissism: An Introduction’ (1914) and ‘Mourning and Melancholia’ (1917 [1915]), take as their formative concern the difficulty of setting apart the ‘inner’ and the ‘outer’ worlds, and of preserving a stable image of... Read More about Introduction: Narcissism, Melancholia and the Subject of Community.

Decoy Paris (2016)
Digital Artefact
Sheils, B. (2016). Decoy Paris. [[Media unknown]]

W.B. Yeats and World Literature: the subject of poetry (2015)
Book
Sheils, B. (2015). W.B. Yeats and World Literature: the subject of poetry. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315547824

Arguing for a reconsideration of William Butler Yeats’s work in the light of contemporary studies of world literature, Barry Sheils shows how reading Yeats enables a fuller understanding of the relationship between the extensive map of world literary... Read More about W.B. Yeats and World Literature: the subject of poetry.

The Violation of Style: Englishness in Edward St Aubyn’s Patrick Melrose Novels (2015)
Journal Article
Robinson, R., & Sheils, B. (2016). The Violation of Style: Englishness in Edward St Aubyn’s Patrick Melrose Novels. Textual Practice, 30(4), 735-756. https://doi.org/10.1080/0950236x.2015.1059030

This article explores the meaningfulness of ‘style’ as a critical concept in contemporary English literary studies. Despite appearing to have fallen out of fashion with the rise of theory in the 1970s, style remains closely linked to canons of histor... Read More about The Violation of Style: Englishness in Edward St Aubyn’s Patrick Melrose Novels.

Poetry in the Modern State: the example of W.B. Yeats's 'Late Style' and 'New Fanaticism' (2014)
Journal Article
Sheils, B. (2014). Poetry in the Modern State: the example of W.B. Yeats's 'Late Style' and 'New Fanaticism'. New Literary History, 45(3), 483-505. https://doi.org/10.1353/nlh.2014.0022

In this article I propose to connect Yeats’s “new fanaticism” and his “late style”—a term I have borrowed from Edward Said to describe the preposterous self-consciousness of the poet’s old age. There are two major aspects to my argument: first, that... Read More about Poetry in the Modern State: the example of W.B. Yeats's 'Late Style' and 'New Fanaticism'.