"Excess in Modern Irish Writing: Spirit and Surplus"
- Examines the topic of excess in modern Irish writing in terms of mysticism, materialism, myth, and language
- Discusses ideas of excess as they appear in works by major thinkers from Hegel, Kierkegaard and Marx to Nietzsche, Bataille, Derrida, and, more recently, Badiou
- Illustrates how Matthew Arnold's idea of the excessive character of the Celt is transformed within the modernity of twentieth-century Irish writing