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| Eamon Maher |
The closing
lecture in our spring series will be given by Dr Eamon Maher, who is lecturer
in French and director of the National Centre for Franco-Irish Studies at the
Institute of Technology Tallaght.
The dominant
focus of Eamon Maher’s work is the cultural, literary and historic links
between France and Ireland. In
connecting the two countries, and setting their literary art in parallel, he
has richly illuminated our understanding of their shared artistic and religious
concerns. Just two examples: in his
early publications on French priest and writer Jean Sulivan (1913-1980), he
identified a parallel between the rural Brittany of Sulivan’s roots, and the
Ireland of the 1950’s. In later work on
John McGahern, Maher explored the profound influence of 19th century
French novelist Flaubert on the Leitrim writer.
Eamon
Maher’s own books include his translation of Jean Sulivan’s memoir, Anticipate
Every Goodbye (Veritas, 2000) and The
Church and its Spire: John McGahern and the Catholic Question (Columba
Press, 2011). He has also edited or
co-edited over twenty monographs, and publishes widely in newspapers and periodicals
such as The Irish Times, Doctrine and
Life, The Month and Études
Irlandaises. In 2013, he broadcast five short presentations on Jean Sulivan
for RTE Radio as part of the Living Word series. His guiding interest in the
influence of faith on 20th century literary culture is evident in work
such as his 2014 article exploring Catholic sensibility in the early novels of
Edna O’Brien.
He is
currently contributing a series of articles on depictions of priests in fiction
to the journal Spirituality. He will
draw on this research for his talk in the Central Catholic Library. Entitled "Life in a Roman Collar: some clerical figures in modern fiction", the talk begins at 6.30pm on Tuesday 28th April, and all are welcome.
