Anglo-Irish : the literary imagination in a hyphenated culture / Julian Moynahan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Moynahan, Julian, 1925-2014.

Contributor:

Clyde de Loache Ryals Endowed Acquisition Fund.

JSTOR (Online Service)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ireland--Intellectual life--19th century.

Ireland.

Intellectual life.

Ireland--Intellectual life--20th century.

Ireland--In literature.

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

English literature.

English literature--Irish authors.

British--Ireland.

British.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 288 pages.)

Place of Publication:

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, ©1995.

System Details:

text file

Summary:

In their day, the Anglo-Irish were the ascendant minority - Protestant, loyalist, privileged landholders in a recumbent, rural, and Catholic land. Their world is vanished, but shades of the Anglo-Irish linger in the big-house estates of Ireland and in the imaginative writings of this realm. In this first comprehensive study of their literature, Julian Moynahan rediscovers the unity of their greatest writings, from Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent through Yeats's poetry to Bowen's The Last September and Samuel Beckett's Watt. Throughout he challenges postcolonial assumptions, arguing that the Anglo-Irish since 1800 were indelibly Irish, not mere colonial servants of Imperial Britain. Moynahan begins in 1800 with the Act of Union and the dissolution of the Dublin Parliament, at which point the Anglo-Irish become Irish. Just as the fortunes of this community begin to wane, its literary power unfolds. The Anglo-Irish produce a haunting, memorable body of writings that explore a unique yet always Irish identity and destiny. Moynahan's exploration of the literature reveals women writers - Maria Edgeworth, Edith Somerville, Martin Ross, and Elizabeth Bowen - as a generative and major force in the development of this literary imagination. Along the way, he attends closely to the Gothic and to the mystery writing of C. R. Maturin and J. S. Le Fanu, and provides in-depth revaluations of William Carleton and Charles Lever.

Contents:

1. Prologue: "Irish enough"

2. Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849): origination and a checklist

3. William Carleton (1794-1869): the native informer

4. Declensions of Anglo-Irish history: the Act of union to the encumbered Estates acts of 1848-49 ... with a glance at a singular heroine

5. Charles Lever (1806-72): The Anglo-Irish writer as diplomatic absentee, with a glance at John Banim

6. The politics of Anglo-Irish Gothic: Charles Robert Maturin, Joseph Sheridan LeFanu, and the return of the repressed

7. History again: the era of Parnell, myths and realities

8. Spinsters Ball: George Moore and the land agitation

9. "The strain of the double loyalty": Edith Somerville and Martin Ross

10. W.B. Yeats and the end of Anglo-Irish literature

11. After the end: the Anglo-Irish postmortem.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 269-277) and index.

Electronic reproduction. New York Available via World Wide Web.

Description based on print version record.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Clyde de Loache Ryals Endowed Acquisition Fund.

ISBN:

9781400887385

1400887380

Publisher Number:

99980406425

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.