A TALK BY PROFESSOR CHRISTOPHER MORASH

Theme of the talk

There was a period in Dublin, in the early years of the twentieth century, when it was possible, if one were so inclined, to drop into a literary salon just about every single night of the week.  In memoirs and letters, writers such as Lady Gregory, Yeats and George Moore all attest to the value of conversation to their work as writers.  And yet, if conversation is important to the writer, it is also the lost part of literary history, the words that materialise in thin air, and disappear as soon as they are spoken.   In this talk, we will explore that rich culture of conversation that existed in Dublin’s literary world, uncovering an awareness of differing styles of conversation, and an appreciation of conversation as an art in its own right, the written word’s missing shadow.   It will be, in short, a talk about talk.

Left to right: Georgie Yeats, Jean Hall and William Butler Yeats - a still photo from the short film 'Yeats and Friends at Hotel Gardens Algeciras' (based on their visit to Spain in 1928). W.B. Yeats won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923. Yeats was considered a driving force of the Irish Literary Revival or the Celtic Twilight, a late 19th and early 20th-century movement that focused on promoting Irish literature, culture, and national identity. The early literary revival had two geographic centres, in Dublin and in London, and Yeats travelled between the two, writing and organising. Yeats spent the final year of his life on the French Riviera and died in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin in 1939.

Photo Copyright Ann Saddlemyer

About the speaker

Professor Chris Morash is the Seamus Heaney Professor of Irish Writing in Trinity College Dublin, ranked #1 in Ireland, where he previously served as the university’s Vice-Provost.  He is the author of numerous books on Irish literature and culture, including Writing the Irish Famine (1995), A History of Irish Theatre, 1601-2000 (2002), A History of The Media in Ireland (2009), Mapping Irish Theatre: Theories of Space and Place [with Shaun Richards, 2013), Yeats on Theatre (2019), and most recently, Dublin: A Writer’s City (2023). 

He is currently editing The Cambridge History of the Irish Novel (due 2026) and writing a book about Irish literary salons.  He is a Member of the Royal Irish Academy and a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin.