Sheridan Le Fanu And Victorian Ireland

A fresh new reassessment of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-73), one of the bestselling Irish novelists of the mid-Victorian period, who is recognized today for his ghost stories and tales of psychological terror, including In a Glass Darkly and The Wyvern Mystery."This excellent study...is far more than a revelation of Le Fanu, though this is incidentally provided in a discriminating and scholarly way...Dr. McCormack illuminates the more private and tortured universe of Le Fanu himself". -- Times Literary Supplement

Consideration of Le Fanu within a specific historic and cultural ' moment' demonstrates how contextual re-readings of fiction can com pletely alter the dominant narrative.

This book considers the fiction of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814–73) in its original material and cultural contexts of the early-to-mid Victorian period in Ireland. Le Fanu’s longstanding relationship with the Dublin University Magazine, a popular literary and political journal, is crucial in the examination of his work; likewise, his fiction is considered as part of a wider surge of supernatural, historical and antiquarian activity by Irish Protestants in the period following the Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland (1801). This study discusses in detail Le Fanu’s habit of writing and re-writing stories – a practice that has engendered much confusion and consternation – while posthumous collections of his work are compared with original publications to demonstrate the importance of these material and cultural contexts. In new critical readings of aspects of Le Fanu’s best-known fiction, light is cast on some of his overlooked work through recontextualisation.

The Big House has been an element of tragedy in the course of Ireland's history and it is considered such by contemporary novelists such as Aidan Higgins and Jennifer Johnson. It has been the crucible in which two civilizations failed to melt and yet became inseparably bound together."ófrom the Introduction by Guy Fehlmann. Contents: Introduction An Historical Survey, Guy Fehlmann; The Big House in Western Ireland, Breand·n MacAodha; "Cast a Cold Eye": A Sociological Approach, Joy Rudd; Distribution, Function and Architecture, Breand·n MacAodha; The Beginnings of Big House Fiction; Maria Edgeworth: Castle Rackrent, Bernard Legros; Irish Homes in the Work of C.R. Maturin, Claude FiÈrobe; Historical Glimpses: John Banim, Bernard Escarbelt; Gerald Griffin, Michel Flot; Le Fanu's Houses, Jean Lozes; The Golden Age; George Moore's Big House Novel: A Drama in Muslin, Jean NoÎl; Joyce Cary: Castle Corner, A Big House Novel?, Jacques Emprin; Interior and Exterior: The Big House and the Irish Landscape in the Work of Elizabeth Bowen, GearÛid Cronin; Elizabeth Bowen's A World of Love, Josette Leray; The Big House in Se·n O'Faol·in's Fiction, Denis Sampson; Molly Keane, Maurice Elliot; Jennifer Johnston, Mark Mortimer; John Banville and the Subversion of the Big House Novel, GearÛid Cronin; A View from Outside; A Shadowless Castle of Treasures: Kinalty Castle in Henry Green's Loving, Fiona MacPhail; Major and Majestic: J.G. Farrell's Troubles, Fiona MacPhail; Through the Poets' Eyes; Yeats and the Big Houses, Jacqueline Genet; The "Big House" by Paul Muldoon: The Approach of the Satirist, Dominique Gauthier; The Image of the Big House in the Poetry of Derek Mahon and Tom Paulin, Caroline MacDonough.

In looking over the papers of Francis Purcell, a parish priest in the south of Ireland, I met with many documents such as the following. Father Purcell was a collector of old local traditions, and weirder things, too. There are some pictures, said I to my friend, which impress one, I know not how, with a conviction that they represent not the mere ideal shapes and combinations which have floated through the imagination of the artist, but scenes, faces, and situations which have actually existed. I had only to request the story of the painting to be gratified; Schalken was an honest, blunt Dutchman, and wholly incapable of committing a flight of imagination. There are few forms upon which the mantle of mystery and romance could seem to hang more ungracefully than upon that of the uncouth and clownish Schalken -- the Dutch boor -- whose pieces delight the initiated of the present day almost as much as his manners disgusted the refined of his own. Yet this man, so rude, so dogged, so slovenly, figures as the hero of a romance by no means devoid of interest or of mystery. And by no means is this the weirdest lore recorded in...T

This work adopts a fresh approach by relating the vogue in the 1860s for sensation fiction to a specific phase of a crisis of faith in the bourgeois ideology of self-help. The demise of sensation fiction after a mere decade is then associated with a returned sense in the 1870s of the durability of the status quo, and the temporary revival of a moralism, which had seemed in a terminal condition in the 1860s.

Irish literature in English commands world-wide respect, but it is rarely discussed in a comparative light. This study of the making and unmaking of character commences with Balzac's impact on nineteenth-century Irish fiction. Sheridan Le Fanu links Balzac and Swedenborg to Yeats, and anticipates Elizabeth Bowen's deployment of ghost story conventions in the 1940s. Through painterly imagery, biblical quotation and the distortion of proper names, Le Fanu shows character to be a self-consuming project. Yeats's Parnell emerges as a modernist gothic hero of the 1930s. Bowen's The heat of the day anatomises the problems of identity, bequeathed by Yeats. Radically revising the idea of a gothic tradition and traversing two centuries of Irish literary history, Dissolute characters gives a fluent and detailed account of the emerging relation between Irish culture, modernism and politics.

This book considers the fiction of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814–73) in their original material and cultural contexts of the early-to-mid Victorian period in Ireland. Le Fanu’s longstanding relationship with the Dublin University Magazine, a popular literary and political journal, is a crucial context in the examination of his work. Likewise, Le Fanu’s fiction is considered as part of a wider surge of supernatural, historical and antiquarian activity by Irish Protestants in the period following the Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland (1801). Le Fanu’s habit of writing and re-writing stories is discussed in detail, a practice that has engendered much confusion and consternation. Posthumous collections of Le Fanu’s work are compared with original publications, demonstrating the importance of these material and cultural contexts. This book reveals new critical readings of some of Le Fanu’s best known fiction, while also casting light on some of his regrettably overlooked work through recontextualisation.