A History of the Irish Novel
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Derek Hand's A History of the Irish Novel is a major work of criticism on some of the greatest and most globally recognisable writers of the novel form. Writers such as Laurence Sterne, James Joyce, Elizabeth Bowen, Samuel Beckett and John McGahern have demonstrated the extraordinary intellectual range, thematic complexity and stylistic innovation of Irish fiction. Derek Hand provides a remarkably detailed picture of the Irish novel's emergence in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He shows the story of the genre is the story of Ireland's troubled relationship to modernisation. The first critical synthesis of the Irish novel from the seventeenth century to the present day, this is a major book for the field, and the first to thematically, theoretically and contextually chart its development. It is an essential, entertaining and highly original guide to the history of the Irish novel.
Trauma and Recovery in the Twenty-First-Century Irish Novel
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The desire to engage and confront traumatic subjects was a facet of Irish literature for much of the twentieth century. Yet, just as Irish society has adopted a more direct and open approach to the past, so too have Irish authors evolved in their response to, and literary uses of, trauma. In Trauma and Recovery in the Twenty-First-Century Irish Novel, Costello-Sullivan considers the ways in which the Irish canon not only represents an ongoing awareness of trauma as a literary and cultural force, but also how this representation has shifted since the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first century. While earlier trauma narratives center predominantly on the role of silence and the individual and/or societal suffering that traumas induce, twenty-first-century Irish narratives increasingly turn from just the recognition of traumatic experiences toward exploring and representing the process of healing and recovery both structurally and narratively. Through a series of keenly observed close readings, Costello-Sullivan explores the work of Colm Tóibín, John Banville, Anne Enright, Emma Donohue, Colum McCann, and Sebastian Barry. In highlighting the power of narrative to amend and address memory and trauma, Costello-Sullivan argues that these works reflect a movement beyond merely representing trauma toward also representing thepossibility of recovery from it.
Understanding Contemporary Irish Fiction and Drama
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In Understanding Contemporary Irish Fiction and Drama, Margaret Hallissy examines the work of a cross-section of important Irish writers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries who are representative of essential issues and themes in the canon of contemporary Irish literature. Included are early figures John Millington Synge and James Joyce; dramatists Brian Friel, Conor McPherson, and Tom Murphy; and prize-winning contemporary fiction writers such as Edna O'Brien, Joseph O'Connor, William Trevor, Roddy Doyle, and Colum McCann. Each chapter focuses on one significant representative piece of contemporary Irish fiction or drama by filling in its cultural, historical, and literary background. Hallissy identifies a key theme or key event in the Irish past essential to understanding the work. She then analyzes earlier literary compositions with the same theme and through a close reading of the contemporary work provides context for that background. The chapters are organized chronologically by relevant historical events, with thematic discussions interspersed. Background pieces were chosen for their places in Irish literature and the additional insight they provide into the featured works.
The Whereabouts of Eneas Mcnulty
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Hailed by the San Francisco Chronicle as "the finest book to come out of Europe this year," The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty is acclaimed Irish playwright Sebastian Barry's lyrical tale of a fugitive everyman. Sebastian Barry's latest novel, Days Without End, is now available. For Eneas McNulty, a happy, innocent childhood in County Sligo in the early 1900s gives way to an Ireland wracked by violence and conflict. Unable to find work in the depressed times after World War I, Eneas joins the British-led police force, the Royal Irish Constabulary--a decision that alters the course of his life. Branded a traitor by Irish nationalists and pursued by IRA hitmen, Eneas is forced to flee his homeland, his family, and Viv, the woman he loves. His wandering terminates on the Isle of Dogs, a haven for sailors, where a lifetime of loss is redeemed by a final act of generosity. The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty is the story of a lost man and a compelling saga that illuminates Ireland's complex history.
The Whereabouts of Eneas Mcnulty
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Haunted Historiographies: The Rhetoric of Ideology in Postcolonial Irish Fiction
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The spectres of history haunt Irish fiction. In this compelling study, Matthew Schultz maps these rhetorical hauntings across a wide range of postcolonial Irish novels, and defines the spectre as a non-present presence that simultaneously symbolises and analyses an overlapping of Irish myth and Irish history. By exploring this exchange between literary discourse and historical events, Haunted historiographies provides literary historians and cultural critics with a theory of the spectre that exposes the various complex ways in which novelists remember, represent and reinvent historical narrative. It juxtaposes canonical and non-canonical novels that complicate long-held assumptions about four definitive events in modern Irish history – the Great Famine, the Irish Revolution, the Second World War and the Northern Irish Troubles – to demonstrate how historiographical Irish fiction from James Joyce and Samuel Beckett to Roddy Doyle and Sebastian Barry is both a product of Ireland's colonial history and also the rhetorical means by which a post-colonial culture has emerged.
Reading the Contemporary Irish Novel 1987 - 2007
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"Reading the Contemporary Irish Novel 1987-2007 is the authoritative guide to some of the most inventive and challenging fiction to emerge from Ireland in the last 25 years. Meticulously researched, it presents detailed interpretations of novels by some of Ireland's most eminent writers. This is the first text-focused critical survey of the Irish novel from 1987 to 2007, providing detailed readings of seminal Irish novels. A timely and much needed text in a largely uncharted critical field. Provides detailed interpretations of individual novels by some of the country's most critically celebrated writers, including Sebastian Barry, Roddy Doyle, Anne Enright, Patrick McCabe, John McGahern, Edna O'Brien and Colm Tóibín. Investigates the ways in which Irish novels have sought to deal with and reflect a changing Ireland. The fruit of many years reading, teaching and research on the subject by a leading and highly respected academic in the field "-- Provided by publisher.
Sub-Versions: Trans-National Readings of Modern Irish Literature.
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From Swift¿s repulsive shit-flinging Yahoos to Beckett¿s dying but never quite dead moribunds, Irish literature has long been perceived as being synonymous with subversion and all forms of subversiveness. But what constitutes a subversive text or a subversive writer in twenty-first-century Ireland? The essays in this volume set out to redefine and rethink the subversive potential of contemporary Irish literature. Crossing three central genres, one common denominator running through these essays whether dealing with canonical writers like Yeats, Beckett and Flann O¿Brien, or lesser known contemporary writers like Sebastian Barry or Robert McLiam Wilson, is the continual questioning of Irish identity ¿ Irishness ¿ going from its colonial paradigm and stereotype of the subaltern in MacGill, to its uneasy implications for gender representation in the contemporary novel and the contemporary drama. A subsidiary theme inextricably linked to the identity problematic is that of exile and its radical heritage for all Irish writing irrespective of its different genres.