Laying out the bones : death and dying in the modern Irish novel / Bridget English.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

English, Bridget, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

English fiction.

Death in literature.

Death--Ireland.

Death.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (pages cm)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Syracuse, New York : Syracuse University Press, 2017.

Summary:

English sheds new light on death and dying in twentieth- and twenty-first century Irish literature as she examines the ways that Irish wake and funeral rituals shape novelistic discourse. She argues that the treatment of death in Irish novels offers a way of making sense of mortality and provides insight into Ireland's cultural and historical experience of death. Combining key concepts from narrative theory-such as readers' competing desires for a story and for closure-with Irish cultural analyses and literary criticism, English performs astute close readings of death in select novels by Joyce, Beckett, Kate O'Brien, John McGahern, and Anne Enright. With each chapter, she demonstrates how novelistic narrative serves as a way of mediating between the physical facts of death and its lasting impact on the living. English suggests that while Catholic conceptions of death have always been challenged by alternative secular value systems, these systems have also struggled to find meaningful alternatives to the consolation offered by religious conceptions of the afterlife.

Contents:

Introduction: Traversing the dismal fields: death and dying in modern Ireland

Death and narrative regeneration: James Joyce's Ulysses

The eve of all souls and the death of desire: Kate O'Brien's The ante-room

Deathbed confessions and unraveling narration: Samuel Beckett's Malone dies

Ritual and denial in a world stripped of illusion: John McGahern's The barracks

Death without resurrection and the modern wake: Anne Enright's The gathering

Conclusion: As you were before you rested: Death and the afterlife of the Irish wake.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780815654148

0815654146

OCLC:

1013734270