Brian Arkins Books

Exploring the themes of sex and love, this book examines a diverse range of poets from ancient Greece and Rome to the Troubadours of Provence, Chaucer, and Shakespeare, highlighting their reflections on the complexities of desire. It also addresses the works of Shelley and Byron regarding incest, alongside modern Irish writers like Eavan Boland, John Montagu, and Desmond Egan. This comprehensive analysis serves as a significant contribution to the history of ideas, revealing how these poets grappled with the tyranny of sexual desire throughout the ages.

This book presents an analysis of more than 30 plays written by Irish dramatists and poets that are based on the tragedies of Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus. These plays proceed from the time of Yeats and Synge through MacNeice and the Longfords on to many of today's leading writers.