Irish Gothic Fiction

THE ‘If the Gothic emerges in the shadows cast by modernity and its pasts, Ireland proved EME an unhappy haunting ground for the new genre. In this incisive study, Jarlath Killeen shows how the struggle of the Anglican establishment between competing myths of civility and barbarism in eighteenth-century Ireland defined itself repeatedly in terms R The Emergence of of the excesses of Gothic form.’ GENCE Luke Gibbons, National University of Ireland (Maynooth), author of Gaelic Gothic ‘A work of passion and precision which explains why and how Ireland has been not only a background site but also a major imaginative source of Gothic writing. IRISH GOTHIC Jarlath Killeen moves well beyond narrowly political readings of Irish Gothic by OF IRISH GOTHIC using the form as a way of narrating the history of the Anglican faith in Ireland. He reintroduces many forgotten old books into the debate, thereby making some of the more familiar texts seem suddenly strange and definitely troubling. With FICTION his characteristic blend of intellectual audacity and scholarly rigour, he reminds us that each text from previous centuries was written at the mercy of its immediate moment as a crucial intervention in a developing debate – and by this brilliant HIST ORY, O RIGI NS,THE ORIES historicising of the material he indicates a way forward for Gothic amidst the ruins of post-Tiger Ireland.’ Declan Kiberd, University of Notre Dame Provides a new account of the emergence of Irish Gothic fiction in the mid-eighteenth century FI This new study provides a robustly theorised and thoroughly historicised account of CTI the beginnings of Irish Gothic fiction, maps the theoretical terrain covered by other critics, and puts forward a new history of the emergence of the genre in Ireland. ON Jarlath Killeen argues that Irish Gothic should be read in the context of the split in Irish Anglican public opinion that opened in the 1750s, and seen as a space for the development and expression of liberal Anglican opinion in a changing political landscape. By providing a fully historicised account of the beginnings of the genre in Ireland, the book also addresses the theoretical controversies that have frustrated discussion of the Irish Gothic in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. The book gives ample space to the critical debate, and rigorously defends a reading of the Irish Gothic as an Anglican, Patriot tradition. This reading demonstrates the connections between little-known Irish Gothic fictions of the mid-eighteenth century (The Adventures of Miss Sophia Berkley and Longsword), the Irish Gothic tradition more generally, and KILLEEN JARLATH also the Gothic as a genre of global significance. Jarlath Killeen is a lecturer in Victorian Literature at Trinity College Dublin. He is the author of The Faiths of Oscar Wilde (2005), Gothic Ireland (2005), and Gothic Literature, 1825–1914 (2009). Cover image: Frontispiece to Longsword, 1762 edition, printed for W. Johnston, London. ISBN 978–0–7486–9080–0 Cover design: Michael Chatfield JARLATH KILLEEN Spine 19mm The Emergence of Irish Gothic Fiction The Emergence of Irish Gothic Fiction History, Origins, Theories Jarlath Killeen © Jarlath Killeen 2014, under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial licence Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LF www.euppublishing.com Typeset in 10.5/13 pt Sabon by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 9080 0 (hardback) ISBN 978 0 7486 9081 7 (webready PDF) The right of Jarlath Killeen to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Contents Acknowledgements vi Introduction: Zombieland: From Gothic Ireland to Irish Gothic 1 1. Braindead: Locating the Gothic 34 2. The Creeping Unknown: Re-Making Meaning in the Gothic Novel 79 3. Mad Love: The Adventures of Miss Sophia Berkley and the Politics of Consent 106 4. The Monster Club: Monstrosity, Catholicism and Revising the (1641) Rising 145 5. Undead: Unmaking Monsters in Longsword 170 Conclusion: Land of the Dead 204 Bibliography 209 Index 231 Acknowledgements This book took a long time to write and a lot of it has been rattling around in my head for over a decade. It is no surprise, therefore, that I have clocked up much more intellectual debt than I could possibly pay back here. In a post-bailout Ireland, though, only banks are allowed to escape repayment, so I’ll make an attempt. My friends and family, espe- cially Martha Fanning, Meghanne Flynn (who found the idea of a book about novels no one reads anymore rather amusing), Eilís Lawlor, John Lawlor, Eimear McBride, Eoin Smith, all deserve places in heaven. The School of English in Trinity College Dublin, is exemplary in terms of its collegiality, and I must thank the following for numerous conversations and arguments, but mostly for the encouragement I received over the years spent writing: Brian Cliff, Philip Coleman, Helen Conrad O’Briain, Paul Delaney, Nicky Grene, Crawford Gribben, Kate Hebblethwaite, Elizabeth MacCarthy, Anne Markey, Stephen Matterson, Brendan O’Connell, Eve Patten, Margaret Robson, Sam Slote. Although I am nothing but an interloper, my eighteenth-century studies colleagues have been particularly welcoming and generous with very useful advice, reading suggestions, and many acts of kindness, including allowing me to read unpublished papers. Aileen Douglas, Ian Campbell Ross and Tina Morin know far more about the subject of this book than I do and would have written a much better one on the subject than I have. Bernice Murphy occupies the office opposite my own and has not only had to suffer my constant attention-seeking for the last few years, graciously guiding me towards not only ever-more horrific viewing material and invaluable critical reading, but has also cheered me up when the going got tough. Darryl Jones, as usual, was a friend, colleague and wise guide and spent far more time talking to me about the book than either it or I deserved. Students in my classes on Literary Monsters had to endure my first public airing of many of the ideas that found their way in here and often patiently explained to me how misguided I am about such things Acknowledgements vii – so I thank them too. I am grateful to the anonymous readers who made very good suggestions which I tried to address as best I could. Some material from the Introduction and Chapter 1 first appeared in two articles published in The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies (2006 and 2008) and is reprinted here with permission. To my wife, Mary Lawlor, and our daughter, Eilís, I owe the most gratitude. I offer them my love and dedicate the book to them both. Introduction Zombieland: From Gothic Ireland to Irish Gothic . send help! The leprechaun is attacking.1 I In 1963, an efficient little shocker called Dementia 13 (or, The Haunted and the Hunted, to go by the title under which it appeared in the United Kingdom) was released, somewhat misleadingly promoted as ‘the most terrifying screen experience of your life’. The film concerns the Halorans, a castellated, fabulously wealthy, Irish landed family whose members appear to be cursed, haunted by the ghost of Kathleen, the youngest daughter, who drowned in a mysterious childhood accident in the family lake. Kathleen may be dead but she is certainly not forgotten and her puzzling demise is commemorated annually by a strange ritual choreographed by the family matriarch, the events of the plot taking place during the seventh such act of remembrance. During the course of the film, it appears as if Kathleen is less-than-faithfully departed and determined to wipe out the rest of the clan from beyond the grave in a series of brutally executed (and well-shot) axe murders. In an unsurpris- ing denouement, the murderer is finally revealed to be rather more flesh and blood than spirit, however, and it is in fact Kathleen’s traumatised brother, Billy, who is set on re-uniting the family in the next world. While a passable B-movie, only noted by film scholars as the first film directed by the then almost completely unknown Francis Ford Coppola, Dementia 13 is interesting from an Irish studies perspective for a number of reasons. The eerie use Coppola makes of Irish locations, shooting them as inherently frightening spaces in which anything could be (and probably is) lurking, the dysfunctional family dynamics (the Halorans are possibly even more psychopathic than the Corleones, the central figures in Coppola’s Godfather trilogy (1972–90)) and the familiar 2 The Emergence of Irish Gothic Fiction Gothic trope of the past violently erupting into the present connect this minor horror film to a much longer cultural tradition which figures Ireland as a zone of weirdness, the supernatural and the pathological. At the time of shooting, Coppola was working for the veteran horror maestro Roger Corman, who had just wrapped up The Young Racers (a charmingly terrible film about racing car drivers and the women who love them), which he filmed all around Europe, finishing up in Ireland, and Dementia 13 was basically made with the left-over budget from Corman’s film, with some of its actors thrown in, supplemented by additional players brought in from the Abbey Theatre. The Irish setting was, then, purely happenstance, since, as Kim Newman points out, Coppola would have filmed in Texas had he been there at the time.2 Coppola got the most out of the location, however, and while naming the dead daughter Kathleen was probably simply a matter of invoking something suitably ‘Oirish’ for an American audience, it (un)happily results in the personal history of the Halorans becoming (unintention- ally) emblematic of a national history in which the Irish are haunted by the ghost of a different Kathleen (ni Houlihan) and young men are led into perpetuating murderous deeds on her behalf.

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