Queering twentieth-century Irish women's writing : uneasy moderns / Naoise Murphy.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Murphy, Naoise, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Irish literature--20th century--Women authors.

Irish literature.

Lesbian authors--Ireland.

Lesbian authors.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (224 pages)

Other Title:

Queering 20th century Irish women's writing

Uneasy moderns

Place of Publication:

Edinburg : Edinburgh University Press, [2026]

Summary:

A queer, postcolonial reading of twentieth-century Irish women's writing. Advances queer studies debates about resistance, progress and 'bad feelings' from a peripheral, postcolonial location. Provides a new reading of canonical Irish women writers that challenges reductive celebratory narratives. Intervenes in Irish public culture and feminist/LGBT+ history, advocating queer modes of thought as a response to the difficulties of a traumatic past. Bringing together a group of untimely, queerly-oriented writers - Dorothy Macardle, Kate O'Brien, Elizabeth Bowen and Molly Keane - this book unsettles the conventional narratives of modern Irish culture. Despite attempts to impose a linear narrative of progress, feel-good accounts are clearly inadequate to the realities of contemporary Ireland. Guided by a queer refusal to move on from bad feelings, Naoise Murphy disrupts common-sense narratives of modernisation, gender, sexuality and race in the postcolonial state. Lingering with unease and discomfort in the work of mid-twentieth-century women writers and the spaces they occupied, this book pays close attention to inadmissible feelings of loss, anxiety, hauntedness and melancholia. By embracing discomfort, it moves towards a less idealising form of queer studies that is more responsive to the complexity of queer history, and offers a new story of Irish culture in the twentieth century.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Uneasy Spaces

Chapter 1 Dorothy Macardle's Middlebrow Gothic Pleasures

Chapter 2 Kate O'Brien's Queer Holy Women

Chapter 3 Elizabeth Bowen's Queer Melancholia

Chapter 4 Molly Keane's Anglo-Irish Camp

Epilogue: Making Space

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based upon online resource; title from PDF title page (viewed November 14th, 2025).

ISBN:

1-3995-4747-X