J. M. Synge Nature, Politics, Modernism

Se?n Hewitt, Government of Ireland Fellow, School of English, University College Cork

Se?n Hewitt is a Government of Ireland Fellow at the School of English, University College Cork. Before joining the School, he was a Leverhulme Fellow at Trinity College Dublin. He is a book critic for The Irish Times, and his debut collection of poetry, Tongues of Fire, is published by Jonathan Cape (2020). His current research project explores the influence of natural history and popular science on British and Irish writings, 1870-1930, and won the Maurice J. Bric Medal of Excellence from the Irish Research Council in 2019.

Introduction
1. 'An Initiated Mystic': Occultism and Modernization in The Aran Islands
2. The Wicklow Essays: Science, Nature, and the Re-Enchanted World
3. 'A Black Knot': Temporalities in the One-Act Plays
4. Dialectics, Irony, and The Well of the Saints
5. 'From the Congested Districts': The Crow and the Golf-Ball
6. Degeneration, Eugenics, and The Playboy of the Western World
Conclusion