Irish Studies: Literature, Film and Theatre

This is a selective guide to some of the many resources available for the study of Irish and  Anglo-Irish Literature, Film, and Theatre. This page will be your gateway to books, journal articles, and web resources.  

Here are a few other subject guides that will be of interest to you:

Subject headings are words and phrases which constitute a "controlled vocabulary" to categorize books by subject field.  Subject headings often indicate the contents of books in terms that their titles do not use, which often may be very general. Subject headings in online databases are often referred to as descriptors, but they serve the same purpose in locating valuable resources. Using a "keyword" search will identify catalog entries that contain those specific terms which can add value to a search; however, the terms can be found anywhere - author, notes, publisher, etc. - therefore there is no indication of the value of the term(s) as content matter of the items in a results list.  

Here are some you may want to try:

Literature:

• Ireland--Fiction
• Ireland - Literary Collections
• Authors, Irish
• English fiction--Irish authors
• English literature - Irish authors
• English literature - Irish authors - history and criticism
• Literature and history--Ireland
• Irish literature--20th century

Film:

• Motion pictures - Ireland - History
• Ireland - In motion pictures
• Film genres - Ireland
• Documentary films - Ireland - History and criticism
• Motion pictures - Ireland - 21st century - History and criticism

Theatre:

• Theatre -  Ireland
• English drama - Irish authors - history and criticism
• Irish drama - 20th century
• Irish drama - History and criticism
• Theatre - Ireland - History - 20th century
• Theatre and globalization - Ireland - History - 20th century
• McPherson , Conor , 1971 -  Criticism and interpretation
• Beckett, Samuel, 1906-1989  Dramatic works

Here are tips for better search results in databases. This usage works on most databases, but check 'Help' sections for supported search syntax. 

Phrase searching:

• "in the name of the father"
• "jim sheridan"

Very useful when searching for specific titles or names.  Keeps the words together as a phrase rather than allowing the databases to search each individual word.

Boolean: (using operators: and, or, not) 

• mother and father searches for occurrences of both words within scope defined.
• mother or father searches for one or all, but both are not required.
• mother not father searches for occurrences of the word ‘mother’ without use of the word ‘father.’
• (mother not father) and god searches for occurrences of the word ‘mother’ without use of the word ‘father,’ then also requires the word ‘god.’

Truncation: 

art* searches for:

• art,
• arts,
• artistic,
• artful, etc.

Wildcard: 

m?n searches for man and men