Contemporary Irish Fiction
Also by Liam Harte DRAWING CONCLUSIONS: A Cartoon History of Anglo-Irish Relations, 1798 1998 (with Roy Douglas and Jim O Hara) IRELAND SINCE 1690: A Concise History (with Roy Douglas and Jim O Hara) Also by Michael Parker * * POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURES (co-editor with Roger Starkey) SEAMUS HEANEY: The Making of the Poet THE HURT WORLD: Short Stories of the Troubles * From the same publishers
Contemporary Irish Fiction Themes, Tropes, Theories Edited by Liam Harte Senior Lecturer in Irish Studies St Mary s College, Strawberry Hill, London and Michael Parker Principal Lecturer in English University of Central Lancashire
First published in Great Britain 2000 by MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-0-333-68381-1 DOI 10.1057/9780230287990 ISBN 978-0-230-28799-0 (ebook) First published in the United States of America 2000 by ST. MARTIN S PRESS, INC., Scholarly and Reference Division, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 ISBN 978-0-312-23164-4 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Contemporary Irish fiction ; themes, tropes, theories / edited by Liam Harte and Michael Parker. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-312-23164-4 (cloth) 1. English fiction Irish authors History and criticism. 2. English fiction 20th century History and criticism. 3. Ireland Intellectual life 20th century. 4. Northern Ireland Intellectual life. 5. Northern Ireland In literature. 6. Ireland In literature. I. Harte, Liam. II. Parker, Michael. PR8803.C65 2000 823'.91099417 dc21 99 055834 Selection, editorial matter and Chapters 1 and 12 Liam Harte and Michael Parker 2000 Chapters 2 11 Macmillan Press Ltd 2000 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2000 978-0-333-68380-4 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 0LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00
To Terence Brown and David Marcus in recognition of their contribution to Irish writing
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Contents Notes on the Contributors Acknowledgements ix xii 01 Introduction 1 Liam Harte and Michael Parker 02 The Right to the City: Re-presentations of Dublin in Contemporary Irish Fiction 13 Gerry Smyth 03 The Aesthetics of Exile 35 George O Brien 04 Re-citing the Rosary: Women, Catholicism and Agency in Brian Moore s Cold Heaven and John McGahern s Amongst Women 56 Siobhán Holland 05 Versions of Banville: Versions of Modernism 79 Joseph McMinn 06 Figuring the Mother in Contemporary Irish Fiction 100 Ann Owens Weekes 07 Petrifying Time: Incest Narratives from Contemporary Ireland 125 Christine St Peter 08 New Noises from the Woodshed: the Novels of Emma Donoghue 145 Antoinette Quinn 09 ContamiNation: Patrick McCabe and Colm Tóibín s Pathographies of the Republic 168 Tom Herron 10 The Pose Arranged and Lingered Over : Visualizing the Troubles 192 Richard Haslam vii
viii Contents 11 Bourgeois Redemptions: the Fictions of Glenn Patterson and Robert McLiam Wilson 213 Richard Kirkland 12 Reconfiguring Identities: Recent Northern Irish Fiction 232 Liam Harte and Michael Parker Bibliography 255 Index 267
Notes on the Contributors Liam Harte holds a doctorate from Trinity College, Dublin and is a Senior Lecturer in Irish Studies at St Mary s College, Strawberry Hill. He is the co-author of Drawing Conclusions: a Cartoon History of Anglo-Irish Relations, 1798 1998 (1998) and Ireland since 1690: a Concise History (1999). He has published essays on contemporary Irish fiction and on the poetry of Louis MacNeice, and is currently compiling an anthology of autobiographical prose by the Irish in Britain. Richard Haslam is a graduate of St Catharine s College, Cambridge and Trinity College, Dublin. Formerly Lecturer in Irish Literature at the Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool, he is presently a Visiting Scholar at St Joseph s University, Philadelphia. He has published a number of articles on nineteenth-century Irish writers and is currently completing a monograph entitled Apparitions: Fantastic Irish Fiction from Swift to Banville. Tom Herron is a lecturer in English at the School of Cultural Studies at Leeds Metropolitan University. He has published many essays on contemporary Irish poetry and cultural politics, and on The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing. He is currently completing a book on the Anthology, and has begun work on a critical study of the work of Seamus Deane. Siobhán Holland lectures in English at Staffordshire University. She has published a number of articles on the representation of women in contemporary Irish fiction, including recent essays on women s voices in the novels of Brian Moore and John McGahern. Richard Kirkland is a lecturer in English at Keele University. He has published widely on Northern Irish poetry, fiction and culture and is the author of Literature and Culture in Northern Ireland since 1965: Moments of Danger (1996). He is also the co-editor of Ireland and Cultural Theory: the Mechanics of Authenticity (1999). Joseph McMinn is Professor of Anglo-Irish Studies at the University of Ulster at Jordanstown. He has published widely on Jonathan Swift and ix
x Notes on the Contributors eighteenth-century Ireland as well as on John Banville. His latest work is The Supreme Fiction of John Banville (1999). George O Brien is Professor of English at Georgetown University, Washington DC. He was awarded a Hennessy New Irish Writing Award in 1973 for his short stories. The Village of Longing (1987), the first volume of his autobiographical trilogy, won the 1988 Irish Book Awards Silver Medal for Literature. The second volume, Dancehall Days, was published the same year, and the third, Out of Our Minds, appeared in 1994. He has published widely on Irish writing and recently edited a Colby Quarterly special issue on contemporary Irish fiction. Michael Parker is Principal Lecturer in English at the University of Central Lancashire. He has written a bestselling study of Seamus Heaney s poetry, Seamus Heaney: the Making of the Poet (1993), and is the editor of The Hurt World: Short Stories of the Troubles (1995) and coeditor of Postcolonial Literatures (Achebe, Desai, Ngugi, Walcott) (1995). He is currently working on a major study, Writing the Troubles: Northern Irish Literature and the Imprint of History. Antoinette Quinn is a Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, where she is a Senior Lecturer in the School of English and a member of the Executive of the Centre for Women s Studies. Her publications include essays on Irish literature and a book-length study of Patrick Kavanagh s writings, Patrick Kavanagh, Born-Again Romantic (1993). Gerry Smyth is a lecturer in cultural history at Liverpool John Moores University. He is the author of The Novel and the Nation: Studies in the New Irish Fiction (1997) and Decolonisation and Criticism: the Construction of Irish Literature (1998). His articles have appeared widely, and he is currently undertaking research on eco-criticism and the New Geography. Christine St Peter is Associate Professor and Chair of Women s Studies at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. An editor of Atlantis: a Women s Studies Journal, she is the author of Changing Ireland: Strategies in Contemporary Women s Fiction (1999) and has published widely in the areas of Irish studies, women s literature, feminist theory and women s health issues.
Notes on the Contributors xi Ann Owens Weekes is an associate professor in the Humanities programme at the University of Arizona in Tucson. The primary focus of her research is Irish women s writing. In addition to articles on fiction and poetry, she is the author of Irish Women Writers: an Uncharted Tradition (1990) and Unveiling Treasures: the Attic Guide to the Published Works of Irish Women Literary Writers (1993).
Acknowledgements The editors wish to express their sincere thanks to the contributors for their interest, patience, and cooperation throughout the preparation of this volume. In addition, Liam Harte would like to thank his colleagues at St Mary s College, Strawberry Hill, for their support and advice; in particular Lance Pettitt, Ronán McDonald and Tomás MacStiofáin. He would also like to thank the College Research Committee for granting him financial support during the later stages of the editing process. Michael Parker wishes to acknowledge the moral and financial support he received from Liverpool Hope University College and the Institute of Irish Studies at the University of Liverpool. Grateful acknowledgement is also made to Patrick Graham and to Michael and Orlaith Traynor for granting the editors permission to use the reproduction of the painting on the jacket. xii