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Names such as Maggie O’Farrell (who co-wrote the screenplay for the award-winning movie adaptation of her novel Hamnet), Colm Tóibín and Anne Enright, both recent Laureates of Irish Fiction, are already popular among Romanian readers thanks to the numerous translations of their works into Romanian. This volume offers comparative perspectives in modern and contemporary Irish literature based on contributions by graduate students, class of 2026, of the Faculty of Letters, Ovidius University of Constanța, under the scientific coordination of Assoc. Prof. habil. Nicoleta Stanca and Lect. dr. Alina Cojocaru.

The in-depth level of the literary analysis, using intertextuality, metabiography, feminism, trauma studies, postcolonialism, migration studies and identity, is remarkable. When our students defended their dissertations in July 2026, we experienced a Joycean “epiphany”, that it has all been a common student project from the start – Irish Literary Studies at Ovidius University (2026). We could not be more pleased with the outcome of teaching Irish writers at our university. This book is an instrument for students and scholars interested in the works of Oscar Wilde, J.M. Synge, James Joyce, Maggie O’Farrell, Colm Tóibín, Anne Enright and Mary Costello. The reader is invited to explore the connections between and among the modern and contemporary Irish writers mentioned as well as the ties with the Victorians Robert Browning and Charlotte Brontë, from a variety of perspectives: the woman’s status and history, femininity and trauma, colonial limitation and postcolonial mobility, identity and migration and the “mythical method”, to quote T.S. Eliot.

And since the year of graduation of our students, whose papers we have included as chapters of the present volume, coincides with the taking over by Ireland of the Presidency of the Council of the European Union in 2026, our wish is to dedicate it to this event as the students’ conclusions resonate with Irish, Romanian and broader European values. Heartfelt thanks to the Embassy of Ireland in Romania, a long-time collaborator in cultural projects of Ovidius University of Constanța.