Molly Keane : essays in contemporary criticism / Eibhear Walshe & Gwenda Young, editors.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Walshe, Eibhear.

Young, Gwenda.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Keane, Molly, 1904-1996--Criticism and interpretation--Congresses.

Keane, Molly.

Keane, Molly, 1904-1996.

Criticism and interpretation.

Genre:

Conference papers and proceedings.

Physical Description:

224 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Dublin ; Portland, OR : Four Courts, [2006]

Summary:

Molly Keane was born Molly Skrine in Co. Kildare in 1904 and used the name of M.J. Farrell as a pen name for novels like Young Entry (1928), Mad Puppetstown (1931), Devoted Ladies (1934), Full House (1935) and her most dramatic novel of the Irish war of Independence, Two Days in Aragon, (1941). At the same time, Moly Keane was also a successful dramatist in London's West End, working with John Gielgud, between 1938 and 1961 to produce a series of commercial hits. After the death of her husband and with the failure of a play in 1961, she moved back to Ardmore, Co. Waterford with her two daughters and gave up writing as M.J. Farrell. Finally, in 1981, she published, under her own name, the novel that is considered her masterpiece, Good Behaviour and found new inspiration as a novelist in her old age with later novels such as Time after Time (1983) and Loving and Giving (1988). Molly Keane died in 1996.

This book on the Irish Big House novelist Molly Keane deals with all of her important novels, drawing together contemporary critical perspectives on this unique voice in Irish writing. The contributors use critical perspectives on gender, on the gothic in Irish writing and on the Big House tradition to place her in relation to Elizabeth Bowen and Somerville and Ross.

Contents:

A Molly Keane chronology 13

Memories of Molly Keane / Sally Phipps, Virginia Brownlow 17

Keane and the Anglo-Irish

Resolving history: negotiating the past in Molly Keane's Big House novels / Andries Wessels 27

Riding for a fall: Molly Keane and the equestrian sublime / Rachael Sealy Lynch 36

Narrating Anglo-Ireland: Molly Keane's Time after Time / Ellen M. Wolff 49

Untimeliness and the Big House novel: Molly Keane's Full House / Carolyn Lesnick 61

Comparative Contexts

Colonial Ireland in retrospect in Somerville and Ross's The Big House of Inver and Keane's Two Days in Aragon / Silvia Diez Fabre 75

The Anglo-Irish Big House under pressure: Bowen's The Last September and Keane's Two Days in Aragon / Derek Hand 85

Gender, Abjection and Sexuality

Abjection and Molly Keane's 'very nasty' novels / Ellen L. O'Brien 101

Fattening out memories: Big House daughters and abjection in Molly Keane's Good Behaviour and Loving and Giving / Kelly J.S. McGovern 125

Queering the Big House

Piggies and spoilers of girls: the representation of sexuality in the novels of Molly Keane / Mary Breen 139

'Now the day is over': bourgeois education, effeminacy and the fall of Temple Alice / Eibhear Walshe 157

Devoted Ladies and the apparitional Irish lesbian / Moira E. Casey 169

Bringing Down the House

Big House home improvements? Troubled owners and modern renovations in Mad Puppetstown / Sarah McLemore 183

'Dark, established currents': Molly Keane's Gothic / Sinead Mooney 195.

Notes:

"In November 2004, the Department of English at University College Cork held an international conference on Molly Keane ..."--Editor's pref.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 215-220) and index.

ISBN:

1851829563

OCLC:

61529258

Publisher Number:

9781851829569