Language Identity And Liberation In Contemporary Irish Literature

Ireland's history of contested language systems has always been linked to its political realities; Language, Identity and Liberation attends to a movement of contemporary Irish writing that considers the significance of the region's tumultuous cultural, social and political history in portrayals of contemporary Ireland's everyday life and speech.

Sociolinguistics in Ireland takes a fresh look at the interface of language and society in present-day Ireland. In a series of specially commissioned chapters it examines the relationship of the Irish and English languages and traces their dynamic development both in history and at present.

Patrick McCabe’s Ireland offers literary scholars’ exploration of the significant fiction produced by this author from the early 1990s and 2000s.

This book is about the role that the imperfect, the disquieting and the dystopian are currently playing in the construction of Irish identities. All the essays assess identity issues that require urgent examination, problematize canonical definitions of Irishness and, above all, look at the ways in which the artistic output of the country has been altered by the Celtic Tiger phenomenon and its subsequent demise. Recent narrative from Ireland, principally published in the twenty-first century and/or at the end of the 1990s, is dealt with extensively. The authors examined include Eavan Boland, Mary Rose Callaghan, Peter Cunningham, Emma Donoghue, Anne Enright, Emer Martin, Lia Mills, Paul Muldoon, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Bernard O’Donoghue, Peter Sirr and David Wheatley.

This book focuses on traditions and transformations in contemporary Irish short fiction, covering pivotal issues such as gender, sexuality, abortion, the body, nostalgia, identity, and migration. In separate chapters, it introduces readers to important writers such as Maeve Binchy, Colm Tóibín, Edna O’Brien, Emma Donoghue, Gish Jen, and Donal Ryan. Given its focus, the book benefits researchers and students who are interested in Irish literature and culture, especially those who want to learn about important traditions in Irish literature, the changing face of these conventions, and the implications. The book, which received the First Book Prize 2019 awarded by The Hong Kong Academy of the Humanities, offers a unique window on Irish culture and a good read for fans of these acclaimed writers who want to learn about interesting issues concerning their short fiction.

"From demographics to politics to very private memory making, this volume covers the 'grounds' of Irishness as no other I have seen. Considering the variety of topics and the different interests among the contributors, it is remarkable that [the book] is so consistently accessible, jargon-free, and graceful."--Mary Lowe-Evans, University of West Florida "A wide-ranging and important collection of essays on the intersections of social class, gender, national identity, and aesthetics in Irish literature and culture. It is a timely and significant contribution to Irish studies."--Jonathan Allison, University of Kentucky In one of the first books to bring contemporary critical theory to bear on Irish studies, contributors--eminent Irish and American scholars--provide insightful and timely essays on Ireland's changing identity by looking at representations of Ireland in history, film, literature, and political science. Contributors explore the role of language in identity construction, modern efforts to reconstruct Irish identity after the Great Famine, and the impact of gender and class on nationality. Ultimately, the Ireland that emerges from these theoretical, multidisciplinary snapshots is complex, diverse, and largely unmapped. Long defined by others, it is also an Ireland ready and eager to define itself. CONTENTS Introduction: Representation: Responsibility/Ideology/Power/Difference, by Susan Shaw Sailer Part I. Constructing Irish Identities: Nationality, Gender, Language 1. From Nationalism to Liberation, by Declan Kiberd 2. "The Stone Recalls Its Quarry": An Interview with Eil�an N� Chuillean�in 3. Why I Choose to Write in Irish, The Corpse That Sits Up and Talks Back, by Nuala N� Dhomhnaill Part II. Reconstructing Irish Identities 4. Irish Identity and the Illustrated London News 1846-1851: Famine to Depopulation, by Leslie Williams 5. Studying a New Science: Yeats, Irishness, and the East, by John Rickard 6. The Changing Social Bases of Political Identity in Ireland, by Timothy J. White Part III. Interweavings: Gender, Class, Nationality 7. Class, Gender, and the Forms of Narrative: The Autobiographies of Anglo-Irish Women, by Elizabeth Grubgeld 8. Irish Working-Class Women and World War I, by Claire A. Culleton 9. First Principles and Last Things: Death and the Poetry of Eavan Boland and Audre Lorde, by Margaret Mills Harper 10. Women, "Queers," Love, and Politics: The Crying Game as a Corrective Adaptation of / Reply to The Hostage, by Maureen S. G. Hawkins Susan Shaw Sailer is associate professor of English at West Virginia University and the author of On the Void of To Be: Incoherence and Trope in Finnegans Wake (1993).

An exploration of the way English literature has interacted with architectural edifices and the development of landscape as a national style from the Middle Ages to the 19th Century. Analyzing texts in relation to cultural artefacts, each chapter demonstrates the self-conscious production of English consciousness as its most enduring history.