The aim of this book project is to address recent changes that have taken place throughout the twentieth-century, in Irish urban and rural landscapes as reflected in language, literature and culture. During this time Ireland has seen its rural and urban landscapes undergo dramatic change. For centuries, rural Ireland had been central to the socio-politics of the island, but in the post-Second World War years there was a “widespread rejection of rural life” (Brown 2004: 199) with the rural population migrating abroad or to the urban centres in the island. Thus by the 1970s, the population of Dublin and its environs consisted of over a million people, doubling the figures from the early 1950s. The Celtic Tiger economy and the post-Tiger context of the present moment have also seen dramatic changes in the landscapes of rural and urban Ireland. Urban centres have grown rapidly in numbers and in the diversity of origins of their population; rural areas have changed significantly with the establishment of multinational companies, and an increasing number of people moving to the countryside and commuting to work in urban areas. The aim of this book is to collect a selection of essays based on papers presented at the conference on “Urban and Rural Landscapes” that was hosted by Högskolan Dalarna last November 2008. The aim of these essays is to analyse these changing urban and rural landscapes, both physical and psychic, mapping how they are reflected in literature, culture, and language from the turn of the twentieth century to the present day.
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