A history of the Irish novel / Derek Hand.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hand, Derek

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English fiction--Irish authors--History and criticism.

English fiction.

English fiction--Irish authors.

Literature and society--Ireland--History.

Literature and society.

Literature and history--Ireland--History.

Literature and history.

National characteristics, Irish, in literature.

History.

Ireland--In literature.

Ireland.

Physical Description:

x, 341 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Summary:

"While some literary critics have traced the origins of the novel back to ancient Greece, the modern novel as an access to the narratives of bourgeois modernity emerged into Western culture in the late seventeenth century. The struggle of that class toward definition and the striving to articulate its character is central to the novel and the stories it tells. Its novelty is found in a formlessness that nonetheless aspires to some idea of order and unity. Indeed, the energies of the early modern novel form can be discerned in its constant assertion of narratives that enact that search for completeness while also allowing for a kind of mourning for the security that older, traditional forms and stories allowed. Thus, novelists, then as now, revel in the possibilities that formal innovation permits while their characters find themselves forced to acknowledge the newness of their world and their experiences in that world"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Interchapter 1 Virtue Rewarded; or, the Irish Princess: burgeoning silence and the new novel form in Ireland 14

Chapter 1 Beginnings and endings: writing from the margins, 1665-1800 24

Interchapter 2 Beyond history: Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent 60

Chapter 2 Speak not my name; or, the wings of Minerva: Irish fiction, 1800-91 70

Interchapter 3 Edith Somerville and Martin Ross's The Real Charlotte: the blooming menagerie 106

Chapter 3 Living in a time of epic: the Irish novel and Literary Revival and revolution, 1891-1922 114

Interchapter 4 James Joyce's Ulysses: choosing life 144

Chapter 4 Irish independence and the bureaucratic imagination, 1922-39 154

Interchapter 5 Elizabeth Bowen's The Last September and the art of betrayal 182

Chapter 5 Enervated island - isolated Ireland? 1940-60 189

Interchapter 6 John Banville's Doctor Copernicus: a revolution in the head 218

Chapter 6 The struggle of making it new, 1960-79 225

Interchapter 7 Seamus Deane's Reading in the Dark and the rebel act of interpretation 247

Chapter 7 Brave new worlds: Celtic Tigers and moving statues, 1979 to the present day 254

Interchapter 8 John McGahern's That They May Face the Rising Sun: saying the very last things 284.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 320-334) and index.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780521855402

0521855403

OCLC:

660087671

Online:

Contributor biographical information

Publisher description