Twentieth-century Irish fiction powerfully reflects the intensely political nature of the Irish experience for the last hundred years, and earlier. The essays in Troubled Histories, Troubled Fictions: Twentieth Century Anglo-Irish Prose focus upon the various ways in which the work of authors otherwise as diverse as James Joyce, James Stephens, Elizabeth Bowen, Molly Keane, Eimar O'Duffy, Jennifer Johnston, William Trevor, Julia O'Faolain, and a number of recent women writers, synchronizes with items that are, or were, high on the agenda of Irish politics. Discussion ranges from the political and ideological use to which Joyce puts etymology, sex, and early Irish history, the symbolical importance of the "Big House", and the politics of sexuality in the immediate post-independence period, to representations of the recent "Troubles".
Contents: Theo D'HAEN and José LANTERS: Preface. Michael BRIAN: What We Want Is Capital: A Political, Etymological, Dantean, and Gnostic Reading of James Joyce's "Ivy Day in the Committee Room". Martin J. CROGHAN: Female Sexuality in The Midnight Court and Ulysses. S.J. BOYD: International Eyesore: Joyce the Pornographer. Bruce STEWART: Joyce at Tara. Werner HUBER: Towards a "Comédie Humaine of Ireland": The Politics of James Stephens's Early Novels. C.L. INNES: Custom, Ceremony and Innocence: Elizabeth Bowen's The Last September. Clair HUGHES: Death of the House: Molly Keane and the Anglo-Irish Gothic Novel. José LANTERS: Eimar O'Duffy's Cuanduine Satires. Kristin MORRISON: The Political Bildungsroman. Christina HUNT MAHONY: Politicization of Women in the Writings of Julia O'Faolain: That Is No Country for Young Men and The Irish Signorina. Margaret SCANLAN: An Acceptable Level of Violence: Women, Fiction, and Northern Ireland. Notes on Contributors.
Contents: Theo D'HAEN and José LANTERS: Preface. Michael BRIAN: What We Want Is Capital: A Political, Etymological, Dantean, and Gnostic Reading of James Joyce's "Ivy Day in the Committee Room". Martin J. CROGHAN: Female Sexuality in The Midnight Court and Ulysses. S.J. BOYD: International Eyesore: Joyce the Pornographer. Bruce STEWART: Joyce at Tara. Werner HUBER: Towards a "Comédie Humaine of Ireland": The Politics of James Stephens's Early Novels. C.L. INNES: Custom, Ceremony and Innocence: Elizabeth Bowen's The Last September. Clair HUGHES: Death of the House: Molly Keane and the Anglo-Irish Gothic Novel. José LANTERS: Eimar O'Duffy's Cuanduine Satires. Kristin MORRISON: The Political Bildungsroman. Christina HUNT MAHONY: Politicization of Women in the Writings of Julia O'Faolain: That Is No Country for Young Men and The Irish Signorina. Margaret SCANLAN: An Acceptable Level of Violence: Women, Fiction, and Northern Ireland. Notes on Contributors.