Narratives Of The Unspoken In Contemporary Irish Fiction

This Open access book is a collection of essays and offers an in-depth analysis of silence as an aesthetic practice and a textual strategy which paradoxically speaks of the unspoken nature of many inconvenient hidden truths of Irish society in the work of contemporary fiction writers. The study acknowledges Ireland’s history of damaging silences and considers its legacies, but it also underscores how silence can serve as a valuable, even productive, means of expression. From a wide range of critical perspectives, the individual essays address, among other issues, the conspiracies of silence in Catholic Ireland, the silenced structural oppression of Celtic Tiger Ireland, the recovery of silenced stories/voices of the past and their examination in the present, as well as millennial disaffection and the silencing of vulnerability in today’s neoliberal Ireland. The book ’s attention to silence provides a rich vocabulary for understanding what unfolds in the quiet interstices of Irish writing from recent decades. This study also invokes the past to understand the present and, thus, demonstrates the continuities and discontinuities that define how silence operates in Irish culture. Grant FFI2017-84619-P AEI, ERDF, EU (INTRUTHS “Inconvenient Truths: Cultural Practices of Silence in Contemporary Irish Fiction”) Funded by the Spanish Research Agency AEI http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100011033 and by the European Regional Development Fund ERDF "A Way of Making Europe"

By examining portrayals of male homosociality in Sally Rooney's novels, the book documents how male relationships are formed, challenged, and often disavowed and the profound negative effects this can have for the wellbeing of men. The book also highlights the importance of the sociocultural context within which male relationships are formed and supports that the potential for healthy and meaningful relationships between men depends on how they are brought up to view themselves as men and their role in the society they live in. That is, despite the many examples whereby space for authentic and meaningful male homosociality is limited and well concealed, the book also offers a more optimistic potential for men's relationships by illustrating the significance of broader understandings of masculinity, unfettered by homophobia and misogyny, in allowing for male homosociality with the potential of emancipating men from heteropatriarchal norms which dictate their behaviour toward themselves and others.

Women and Exile in Contemporary Irish Fiction examines how contemporary Irish authors have taken up the history of the Irish woman migrant. It situates these writers' work in relation to larger discourses of exile in the Irish literary tradition and examines how they engage with the complex history of Irish emigration.

Second edition (first, 1977) of a book offering practical guidelines and techniques for those wishing to effectively practice or develop this ancient skill. Seventeen short stories by well-known authors such as Mary Lavin, Edna O'Brien and Julia O'Faolain, and new writers such as Clare Boylan, Rita Kelly and Una Woods. With an introduction by the editors that examines the role of women writers in Irish literature. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Despite the richness of the short story in Irish literature, there remains a relative absence of stories translated from the Irish. This collection of stories aims to help fill this gap. Micheal O Conghaile is one of Ireland's foremost contemporary Irish-language prose writers. His stories are filled with dissidents and rebels, protagonists who find themselves suddenly revealed as errata in someone else's master narrative. Padraic Breathnach is probably the most prolific short story writer in Irish, with over 150. The four included here show isolated individuals struggling against inherited authority structures, and they may tell us more than any sociologist about the destiny of community. He is glorious and unmatched in his depiction of decay, the decay of social, cultural, and moral fabrics, of landscape and mind gone to seed. Dara O Conaola's stories share a real generic affinity with that other favored form of Gaelic tradition, the lyric poem. His stories are full of wonder and imagination. Lastly, Alan Titley is probably best known as a novelist. Politically, his stories probably represent a more radical, subversive side, while his language reveals a linguistic virtuosity that verges on the carnivalesque.

Presents essays by thirty-five leading scholars of Irish fiction that provide authoritative assessments of the breadth and achievement of Irish novelists and short story writers.

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.