Young, Barbara Ann

Dr. Barbara Ann Young is Adjunct Instructor in the English Department of Molloy College. She completed her Ph.D. at Fordham University, New York. She began teaching English at the secondary school level in 1987. In addition to offering courses in British and American literature, Dr. Young is active in the college’s Irish Studies minor.

The Child as Emblem of the Nation in Twentieth-Century Irish Literature

2006 0-7734-5614-7
The Irish literary child has its nascence in earliest Celtic mythology and flourishes as an emblem of the Irish nation throughout Irish literature to the present day. This book concentrates on the development of this symbolic figure in twentieth century Irish poetry and prose and juxtaposes the figure of the literary child at any given point in the century with political and social conditions of Ireland at the time. The result of this pairing over the course of the century is the revelation of the paradigmatic nature of the child in Irish literature. As the nature of and challenges before this child evolve in literature, so does the nation of Ireland.