Paul Muldoon, Madoc: A Mystery

Ivan Phillips (University of Hertfordshire)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.4: Irish Writing and Culture, 400-present.
Vol. editors: Paul Delaney (Trinity College Dublin), Anne Markey (Dublin City University), Ian Campbell Ross (Trinity College Dublin), Sinéad Sturgeon (Queen's University Belfast)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1990

Places

Northern Ireland (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Essays/ Lectures (any)
Non-fictional prose
Poem collection
Sonnet

Resources

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Paul Muldoon’s first major publication following his move to the USA in 1987 was the vast and complex book of enigmas that is

Madoc – A Mystery

. Developing, often to an extravagant degree, many of the formal and thematic characteristics of his previous work – a fascination with alternative lives, native American cultures, sex, drugs, violence, expanded structures, narrative and semantic involution, the idiosyncratic renewal of traditional forms – the book delighted many and irritated others, including some of those who had championed Muldoon’s work from the beginning. The long title poem which dominates the collection (all but 11 of the 257 pages) is concerned with an account of the planned utopian voyage of the poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey to the Americas in…

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3061 words

Citation: Phillips, Ivan. "Madoc: A Mystery". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 29 August 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=3776, accessed 26 April 2024.]

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