Estudios Irlandeses , Number 3, 2008, pp. 166-185 ______AEDEI IRISH STUDIES IN SPAIN – 2007 Reviews by José Francisco Fernández

Copyright (c) 2008 by José Francisco Fernández. This text may be archived and redistributed both in electronic form and in hard copy, provided that the authors and journal are properly cited and no fee is charged for access.

Introduction ...... ….167 La capital de las ruinas; seguido de F- by Samuel Beckett (2007) Federico Corriente, Iñigo García Ureta, Cristina Járboles and Miguel Martínez-Lage, trads...... ….168 La literatura irlandesa en España (2007) Antonio Raúl de Toro Santos British and Irish Writers in the Spanish Periodical Press. Escritores británicos e irlandeses en la prensa periódica española. 1900-1965 (2007) Antonio Raúl de Toro Santos and David Clark ...... ….169 Estudios Joyceanos en Gran Canaria: Joyce “In His Palms” (2007) Henríquez, Santiago J. y Carmen Martín Santana, coords...... ….170 The Doing of Telling on the Irish Stage. A Study of Language Performativity in Modern and Contemporary Irish Theatre (2008) Rosana Herrero Martín ...... ….172 Análisis de género en los estudios irlandeses (2007) Mª Elena Jaime de Pablos, ed...... ….173 Tentativas sobre Beckett (2007) Julián Jiménez Heffernan, ed...... ….174 Postcolonial and Gender Perspectives in Irish Studies (2007) Marisol Morales Ladrón, ed...... ….176 El tercer policía by Flann O’Brien (2006) Héctor Arnau, trad. Crónica de Dalkey byFlann O’Brien (2007) Mª José Chuliá García, trad...... ….178 Los cuatro elementos y Seamus Heaney: de la cosmogonía helénica a la cosmopoética de The Spirit Level (1996). 2007 Juan Ráez Padilla ...... ….179 A Provisional Dictator. James Stephens and the Fenian Movement (2007) Marta Ramón ...... ….180 ______ISSN 1699-311X

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Literatura irlandesa (2007) Beatriz Villacañas ...... 181 Eavan Boland’s Evolution as an Irish Woman Poet. An Outsider Within an Outsider’s Culture (2007) Pilar Villar-Argáiz...... 182

Introduction José Francisco Fernández, March 2008 In his preface to Modern Irish Short Stories the Battle of Jarama and later in Brunete and (London: Michae1 Joseph, 1981) Anthony Ebro. Around 30 per cent of the Irish contingent Burgess wrote: “Any man, whatever his died at the front. Celada, González de la Aleja nationality, has a right to admire and to and Pastor García include in their book the short propagandize for Irish literature, but it helps if he biographies of Charles Donnelly, poet, Thomas possesses Irish blood or a mad capacity for O’Brien, poet and playwright, and Frank Ryan, empathizing with Ireland”. Although the gender left-wing activist and charismatic leader of the exclusivity he assigns for the taste of things Irish main group of Irish brigadists. would today be quite objectionable, I agree with By happy coincidence, I later had the Burgess’s opinion. Having no Irish blood in my opportunity to know more about Eoin O’Duffy ancestors as far as I know, mine must be the when Las brigadas internacionales de Franco, second case, and it is true that Ireland keeps by Christopher Othen (Barcelona: Destino, 2007) appearing in many of the things one reads. came to my hands. Othen recounts the amazing It rang true while reading the complete and story of this alcoholic general, admirer of brave study Los brigadistas de habla inglesa y la Mussolini, who managed to gather a group of guerra civil española, by Antonio R. Celada, 700 volunteers, the Blueshirts Brigade, to Manuel González de la Aleja and Daniel Pastor “defend Spanish Catholics” but whose secret García (Salamanca: Almar, 2006), where they ambition was to return in triumph from the war include a chapter on the “Connolly Column” . By and recover his lost influence in Ireland’s the time the Irish Parliament passed a bill in national politics (he had founded the National February 1937 forbidding any citizen to go to the Corporate Party in 1934 with the intention of Spanish war, many Irish volunteers were already promoting a Fascist revolution in Ireland). in Spain fighting against Fascism. Around 170 Most of the young men who accompanied men joined the ranks of the International O’Duffy hailed from the South West of Ireland Brigades and were destined to the Lincoln and were driven by religious (the church in Brigade (North-American) or to the Mac-Paps Ireland supported Franco’s revolt), and not (Canadian). Amongst the Irish who came to help political motives. They constituted the 15th flag the legitimate Spanish government there were of the Spanish Foreign Legion, but had barely workers, unemployed and members of the Irish any experience of actual fighting during their Communist Party, who mainly came from time in Spain. After a brief and uninspiring Dublin, Cork, Waterford and Belfast. As well as contact with open fire, O’Duffy’s group of being led by ideals of justice and solidarity, volunteers were destined to defensive and secure many of them made the long and difficult positions, where they grew restless and journey to the south of Europe to make up for the disillusioned with their leader. In June 1937 they support to Franco given by General Eoin were sent back to Ireland. O’Duffy. For them, O’Duffy’s particular crusade How many stories, I wonder, are still to be blemished Ireland’s name. discovered which connect Ireland and Spain? I The Irish brigadists had a distinguished role in hope that the books reviewed below (you guys 168

have worked hard this year, I must say) may usually known as the German Letter of 1937 foster fruitful research on bright and dark areas (Carta alemana), where Martínez-Lage coined of our common history. This is what happens the celebrated expression of “literatura del after reading good books. One feels fortified for despalabro” (“Literatur des Unworts” in the whatever trials may come one’s way in the original transcript) meant to refer to that kind of form of printed letters. writing which is aware of its own impossibility, PS-1. A fellow-researcher’s complaint: Why that is, pure Beckett. must many young scholars pay a “subsidy” to In La capital de las ruinas; seguido de F- Rod certain publishing houses to get their books presents a translation into Spanish of different published? Is it not enough that they have spent texts whose main characteristic is the fact of many hours of their youth locked in libraries having been written before Samuel Beckett’s working hard on their first publication? intensive creative period (1947-1951) which PS-2. A reviewer’s complaint: Why do not would produce Godot, the trilogy and Texts for scholarly books published in Spain have a Nothing. The article “The Capital of Ruins”, the glossary of authors and topics in alphabetical poem “Antipepsis” and the short narrative piece order in the final pages? It does really help the “F-” had not been published before in Spanish, work of consultation and it does not take much while the poems “Saint-Lô” and “Mort de A.D.” trouble to make. You have already written the are presented in new versions. “The Capital of book, which is the difficult part. Ruins” is a text written for the radio but never broadcast in which Beckett describes the function of the Irish Hospital in Saint-Lô, a Beckett, Samuel. 2007. La capital de las heavily-bombed city in the Northern coast of ruinas; seguido de F-. Federico Corriente, France where the Irish Red Cross set up a basic Iñigo García Ureta, Cristina Járboles and but much needed infirmary just after the Second Miguel Martínez-Lage, trads. Segovia: La World War. Beckett worked there in the second Uña Rota. ISBN: 978-84-95291-11-0. half of 1945 as a translator, ambulance driver In the past six years Carlos Rod has made a and handyman, as it was the only way to return commendable effort to disclose a series of to France because of the difficulties imposed on Beckett’s forgotten texts from his small but immigrants by the French government after the gallant publishing house La Uña Rota. Counting conflict. Among factual descriptions of the on the invaluable help of translator and Beckett devastated environment in “La capital de las enthusiast Miguel Martínez-Lage, he has so far ruinas”, translated by Martínez-Lage, there are commissioned the translations of minor but reflections on giving and receiving, on memory, relevant works of the Beckett canon which had returning and humanity “in ruins”. “Saint-Lô”, not been translated into Spanish or which needed by the same translator, is a very short poem on new polished-up versions, and has published the ghostly city and “Muerte de A.D.”, in them in bilingual editions. These texts have been Federico Corriente’s and Cristina Járboles’s normally accompanied by Martínez-Lage’s version, is a lament for Arthur Darley’s death, a explanatory notes which have greatly enhanced doctor in the Irish hospital who stroke up a the understanding of the Nobel Prize winner’s friendship with Beckett. Íñigo García Ureta lost and almost forgotten pieces. offers in “Indigestión” two competent and In 2002 Carlos Rod published Martínez- spirited versions of Beckett’s poem Lage’s translation of Samuel Beckett’s “Antipepsis”, and finally Martínez-Lage translation of Robert Pinget’s radiophonic play translates a curious piece of fiction, “F-”, The Old Tune (La vieja canción). It was followed published by Suzanne Dumesnil (Beckett’s by Martínez-Lage’s accomplished version of companion for life) in the avant-garde journal Stirrings Still (A vueltas quietas) in 2004, and in transition in 1949 but commonly attributed to the same year he issued in one volume Beckett’s Beckett himself because of its bleak landscape, abandoned play on Samuel Johnson Human its oppressive atmosphere and its clumsy but Wishes (Deseos del hombre) and the seminal text inquisitive characters. 169 de Toro Santos, Antonio Raúl. 2007. La an Irish author is mentioned are included in the literatura irlandesa en España. Coruña: extensive footnotes of the book. In many cases Netbiblo. ISBN: 978-84-9745-216-8. these were reviews of published translations, like de Toro Santos, Antonio Raúl and David Juan Ramón Jiménez’s version of Riders to the Clark. 2007. British and Irish Writers in the Sea by Synge. Antonio Marichalar also wrote on Spanish Periodical Press. Escritores británicos Liam O’Flaherty concerning the Spanish e irlandeses en la prensa periódica española. translation of The Informer. De Toro Santos does 1900-1965. Coruña: Netbiblo. ISBN: 978-0- not forget to register the references to Irish 9729892-7-5. literature published in the periodical press written in Galician, Basque or Catalan. Yeats’s The University Institute of Research in Irish Cathleen Ní Houlihan was translated into these Studies Amergin has added two new titles to its three languages and it was widely reviewed in scholarly collection. In the first one, La the literary journals of the time. A special literatura irlandesa en España, Antonio Raúl de attention is given to Joyce in Spain, and here de Toro Santos presents the full text of the lecture Toro Santos continues the excellent tradition of that he gave at the James Joyce Conference in research on this field which includes such works Las Palmas in 2006 (see Joyce In His Palms as La recepción de James Joyce en España a below). For that occasion he wrote the chronicle través de la prensa 1920-1975 (1997) by Carlos of the reception of Irish literature in Spain until García Santacecilia; Joyce en España I (1994) 1965 but warned that in order to obtain a and Joyce en España II (1997) by García Tortosa complete vision the periodical press (including and de Toro Santos, and James Joyce in Spain. A literary journals and cultural magazines) had to Critical Bibliography (1972-2002) (2003) by be taken into account. This section is included Lázaro and de Toro Santos. now in La literatura irlandesa en España, a A second essay in the book considers the comprehensive research that is bound to become response that Irish writers had in other peninsular a manual of compulsory reference for students languages. De Toro Santos focuses on the and teachers working in the field. privileged relation between Galician and Irish The first conclusion that de Toro Santos literature, tackling such themes as commercial, arrives at is that there was an almost complete religious and military events that connected both ignorance on Irish writers in Spanish newspapers communities along history. from 1900 to 1965, with the exceptions of Shaw, Since the mid-19th century, it has been Wilde, Yeats, Swift, Goldsmith and Joyce. revealed, Galician intellectuals were sympathetic Sometimes authoritative voices wrote against a to the Irish for their fight against the English. For rush of translations of a poor quality and others the regionalist and nationalist movements that complained that not many Spanish writers had rose in that century in Galicia, the Basque destined their efforts to the act of translating. Country and Catalonia, Ireland appeared as a Only a few writers, de Toro Santos says, did model and took the role of a sister nation. But some work of this kind, like Pedro Salinas with only in Galicia, de Toro Santos explains, this Proust, Ricardo Baeza with Wilde, Dámaso interest extended to Irish literature, perhaps due Alonso with Joyce and Juan Ramón Jiménez to common Celtic roots. with Synge. It is necessary to note at this point the Juan Ramón Jiménez emerges, in fact, as a fundamental role in the promotion of Irish major champion of foreign literature at the time. literature by the journal Nós, which ran from His vast knowledge of contemporary European 1920 to 1936. Key intellectuals such as Vicente and American writing singled him out within the Risco, Ramón Otero Pedrayo or Plácido Ramón group of Spanish intellectuals. He even Castro stimulated the study of Irish literature to maintained correspondence with Yeats on the an extent that was unmatched in the rest of publication of his poems into Spanish. But there Spain. Otero Pedrayo translated fragments of was low awareness of Irish literature at the time Ulysses into Galician in 1926 and Risco wrote because there was, in general, little knowledge of Dedalus in Compostela (1929), an early fictional foreign literature. account of a Joycean character in an European All the articles in the periodical press in which 170 language. Yeats also found a relevant niche in proceedings of the 17th annual meeting of the the journal Nós. The Galician translation of Spanish James Joyce Association, which took Cathleen Ní Houlihan, by A. Villar Ponte, was place in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria on 19-22 published there in 1921. Galician intellectuals April 2006. found in Irish literature a mirror in which they Alberto Lázaro’s article is dedicated to answer wanted to see their own image, and frequently the obvious questions concerning the mysterious looked at Irish shores looking for inspiration and translation: Who wrote it? Whose initiative was models of their own literature, as Plácido Ramón it? Why was it never published? Joan Francesc Castro imagined Galician theatre based on Vidal Jové is hence rescued from oblivion in an standards set by Ireland. The book is exemplary work of research, based on a diligent complemented by an appendix with all the reconstruction of events which took Lázaro on a literary works by Irish writers published until journey to different archives and libraries, and 1965 that can be found in the National Library in also counted on the help offered by the Madrid. translator’s daughter. Vidal Jové was a British and Irish Writers in the Spanish politically-involved man of letters who had to go Periodical Press 1900-1965 by de Toro Santos into exile at the beginning of the Civil War. He and David Clark is an instructed and extensively- later returned to Spain and carried out an intense documented work of reference which contains a literary activity in the 1950s and 60s as a writer, detailed record of every article published in editor and translator from French and Catalan Spain on Irish and British authors during the into Spanish. He translated Ulysses into Catalan time in question. One can hardly imagine the from Auguste Morel’s French version and sent various years of work that such a volume has the result to his son-in-law George Cheyne, a taken the authors. It implied the consultation in scholar at Newcastle University, who would different libraries and the task of going through revise and compare Vidal Jové’s text with the dozens of journals, newspapers and weekly original in English. According to Alberto Lázaro, publications page by page. In its dictionary-like Vidal Jové showed a vivid imagination and a format, it offers a complete vision of the discerning intellect in his rendering of Joyce’s reception of English and Irish writers in Spain novel. Details of the enigmatic publishing house for more than half a century. It also contains which accepted the manuscript, AHR, are also useful appendixes of English literature in Spain, generously given, as well as a likely explanation of translation and of historical and cultural of why the book was not finally published. This references to Ireland in those publications. The is, in short, a rare and extraordinary discovery present reviewer fervently encourages the that must be described in glowing terms. authors to continue their work with a future This serves to prove that despite the general volume that would comprise the period of the misconception over books of proceedings, last forty years. sometimes little gems can be found in these apparently cursory volumes. Alberto Lázaro’s Henríquez, Santiago J. y Carmen Martín article is one of them, but the present book Santana, coords. 2007. Estudios Joyceanos en abounds in remarkable pieces of criticism. José Gran Canaria: Joyce “In His Palms”. Madrid: Miguel Alonso Giráldez writes wisely on the Huerga y Fierro. ISBN: 978-84-8374-677-6. language of frustration in Ulysses. He explores the author’s personal nightmares that might have The first translation of James Joyce’s Ulysses into resulted in the novel’s broken syntax, unfinished Catalan was made by Joaquim Mallafrè in 1981. Or sentences and stylistic complexity. Alonso was it? There exists a previous unpublished version Giráldez delves into the unfulfilled sexuality of Joyce’s masterpiece which bears the date of (voyeurism, masochism, onanism) of the main 1966 and lies in a box at the General Archives of characters to shed light on the most disturbing the Spanish Administration in Alcalá de Henares. features of Joyce’s novel. This felicitous discovery was made by Alberto Antonio Raúl de Toro Santos is one of the Lázaro and a fascinating account of the genesis of contributors to Joyce In His Palms who also this unknown document is provided in the book of reveals some unknown facts. In his agreeable

171 discussion on Irish literature in Spain in the first allusions. He discusses Joyce’s ideas on drama half of the 20th century he expands on the and his only incursion into the world of theatre. reception of writers from the Irish Literary Francisco García Tortosa’s contribution pays Revival by renown Spanish authors such as Juan attention to the presence of Jews in Ulysses. Ramón Jiménez or Federico García Lorca. There There are certain points in common between the was, de Toro Santos states, a marked affinity in Irish writer’s erratic existence and the plight of Irish and Spanish writers with regards to their the Jewish people along the centuries. But being interest in indigenous peripheral culture in their Ulysses, in part, a precise testimony of Dublin’s countries. Juan Ramón Jiménez translated Irish social structure at the beginning of the 20th authors such as Synge, AE and Yeats. He century, it is reasonable to ask why did Joyce recommended Valle-Inclán’s play Divinas make one of his main characters a Jew when Palabras to the director of the Abbey Theatre in there were not many of them in Dublin at the Dublin, and Lorca was influenced by Jiménez’s time. García Tortosa’s incisive erudition can be translation of Riders to the Sea. A copy of one discerned throughout his explanation: in order to volume of Synge’s book, dedicated by Lorca to create the uncharted history of his country, Joyce Galician poet Carlos Martínez-Barbeito is one of had to immerse his fiction in the origins of the discoveries made by de Toro Santos. Ireland, on the one hand, and on the pillars of This article is followed by a paper by Benigno Western civilization, on the other: Rome, Greece del Río, who reads the second chapter of and Israel. García Tortosa also traces the Ulysses, “Nestor”, from a multicultural possible origins of Leopold and Molly Bloom as perspective, having Ezra Pound’s XLV Canto as part of the migratory movements of Jews from a point of reference. Benigno del Río captures Central and Southern Europe towards the West. the colourless and deadening “still-life” quality María Isabel González Cruz makes a revision in some scenes of the chapter caused by the of the sociolinguistic aspects in Dubliners, and negative influence of money, establishing Santiago J. Henríquez Jiménez explores the powerful connections between the devaluation of vitality of Irish writing from the genius of Wilde, language and the devaluation of currency. Yeats, Joyce and Beckett to the energy of Susana Domínguez Pena studies Sean modern Irish talents. Rubén Jarazo Álvarez O’Faolain’s difficult relationship with his native delves into the influence of literature written in country and his criticism towards the Catholic English on a paradigmatic figure in Galician Church in his short stories. José Manuel Estévez letters, Álvaro Cunqueiro. Jarazo Álvarez first Saá also sets himself the task of studying short exposes how important Galician intellectuals, stories, those included in the collection New notably Vicente Risco, defined their culture in Dubliners (2005), focusing on Dermot Bolger’s connection with other literatures of the Atlantic personal homage to Ulysses in the narrative shores: Irish, Scottish or Welsh. Next, he “Martha’s Streets”. Margarita Estévez Saá introduces the work of Álvaro Cunquerio, who cleverly addresses the question of Lucia Joyce’s incorporated references from the Celtic and influence on her father when he was writing English literary universe into his work. Finally, Finnegans Wake. Carol Loeb Shloss’s polemical the influence of Lord Dunsany’s fantastic biography of this intriguing character, Lucia literature on the Galician writer is firmly Joyce. To Dance in the Wake (2004) is regarded established. to be biased and partial but, Margarita Estévez Lidia María Montero Ameneiro studies in Saá claims, Shloss might be right in her Molly Keane’s novel Two Days in Aragon appreciation of Lucia’s complicity in the (1941), the relationship between the members of composition of her father’s last book. Her the Ascendancy living in the Big House of the presence is unmistakably detected in the book title with the representative figures of Catholic and abundant references indicate that she was Ireland: their servants and an Irish rebel in the part of Joyce’s creative process. period after the Anglo-Irish war. Rafael García León makes use of the metaphor The rest of the articles in the volume are of the world as a stage to search for the terms worthy of careful attention too: Maureen used by Joyce to link life with theatrical Mulligan writes on the importance of music in 172

Joyce’s “The Dead”. Juan Ignacio Oliva than doing and it has raised imagination to the examines Joycean echoes in the confessional category of primal force in the scene. Her project writing of Anglo-Indian writers Amit Chaudhuri has been the revision of Irish theatre in the past and Shyam Selvadurai. Sonia Petisco considers 125 years stressing this element in the major Molly Bloom’s monologue in Ulysses from the theatrical movements during this period. With perspective of the inner de-centering of the the long sequence of authors and plays described modern subject. María Isabel Porcel García in the book, The Doing of Telling on the Irish evaluates the influence of Valery Larbaud on Stage is a considerable feat of orchestration. Joyce and Jefferey Simons carefully analyzes the Herrero’s dissertation is divided into four stages of writing in the seventh episode of parts. The first chapter presents the Ulysses, “Aeolus”. María de la Cinta Zunino multidisciplinary approach of her study, Garrido’s contribution aptly puts an end to his consisting of a complex theoretical framework collection of papers. She traces biblical echoes in where different schools of thought are Joyce’s book of poems Chamber Music. In her represented: speech acts theory, orality, view, there are many similarities between the poststructuralism, phenomenology, therapeutic style and imagery of the Biblical Song of Songs approach to story telling, postcolonialism, the and Joyce’s early book of verse, particularly in revisionist perspective of history and the relation to the union of lovers. Zunino Garrido teachings of Lacan on the unconscious. With efficiently describes the Jesuit cultural such a combination of procedures (some of the background in which Joyce was brought up and approaches are difficult to reconcile) the book provides textual evidence for the connection may lack a cause-and-effect uniformity, but it between the Biblical text and Joyce’s poems. gains in colour, interest and freedom. All these The resemblance between Joyce’s lyrics and St. movements and theories, nevertheless, are John of the Cross mystic poems is also applied at some point in the book without established. neglecting the main tenet: Most Irish Perhaps a final note should be addressed to contemporary theatrical repertoire is anti- those responsible for the editing process at the naturalistic and non-mimetic, in other words, it is publishing house. It is a matter of regret that theatre of language in performance. In many of such a splendid collection of articles is spoiled the plays studied in the following chapters by a certain sloppiness: there are too many typos, English as the written word is represented with a thorough revision of punctuation should be awe and mistrust. That is why the Irish stage has made and a systematic homogenization with focused on the oral faculty of language, as a way regards to titles of books and bibliographic of searching for roots in the ancient traditions of references would also be advisable. an ancient language: “As a country whose people have suffered a long history of dispossession in Herrero Martín, Rosana. 2008. The Doing of reality, Ireland has fervently sought its sense of Telling on the Irish Stage. A Study of Language identity in the imaginary” (31). The pervasive Performativity in Modern and Contemporary idea of language on the Irish stage as a structure Irish Theatre. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. with an enormous destabilising potential enables ISBN: 978-3-631-57450-8. Rosana Herrero to make her way through the Many studies on contemporary literature lack a burning charcoal of theory unscathed. guiding principle to connect all the threads that W. B. Yeats, naturally, occupies the discussion remain unexplained and unrelated. Rosana of theatre in the next chapter. As Rosana Herrero Herrero Martín’s book is a different case. From reminds the reader, he was the first writer to the consideration of language’s performative formulate the role of the Irish dramatist as nature she in fact builds an alternative history of shaman. His linguistic idealism and his contemporary Irish theatre. continuous use of symbols, dreams, dance, Her thesis is that language has not normally masks and reveries in his plays make him the been used in Irish drama for the presentation of founding figure of the non-factual theatre in actual facts, but has become a protagonist in Ireland. He left a legacy that other Irish itself, it has put more emphasis on telling rather dramatists have, to a bigger or lesser extent, 173 followed. Herrero delves into Yeats’s ritualistic from stereotypical accounts of his work. procedures in theatre along the whole of his Finally, in the fourth chapter, the plays of literary career, analysing early plays such as On seven contemporary dramatists (Brian Friel, Tom Baile’s Strand (1904) or mature ones such as Murphy, Frank McGuinnes, Sebastian Barry, Purgatory (1938). Herrero traces Yeats’s Marina Carr, Donal O’Kelly and Enda Walsh) evolution as a dramatist from his beginnings as are discussed to prove that the central notion of an author who relied on language alone to arouse language’s performativity is kept alive in the imagination (he was a poet after all) to his subversive and radical forms by the new latter attempts towards the necessary generation of Irish playwrights. collaboration between speech and physicality. His central role in the foundation of the Abbey Jaime de Pablos, Mª Elena, ed. 2007. Análisis Theatre and his unsuccessful attempt to connect de género en los estudios irlandeses. Almería: with the audience of his time is fully analysed Editorial Universidad de Almería. ISBN: 978- and contextualised. 84-8240-705-0. Herrero next studies five plays of the “early Elena Jaime has edited a collection of articles Irish theatre movement” that roughly coincide which centre around Irish literature and culture with Yeats’s career in theatre writing: Dion from a gender studies perspective. This is a Boucicault’s The Shaughraun (1875), Oscar difficult book to speak about because I was Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest invited to present an article and I am therefore an (1895), Lady Gregory’s Spreading the News interested part and of course favourably biased. I (1904), J. M. Synge’s The Playboy of the will then merely expose the contents of what I Western World (1907) and Sean O’Casey’s The consider to be relevant contributions to the Shadow of a Gunman (1923). Again, the use of stimulating field of Feminist and Gender Studies. language as the carrier of a renewed meaning of In the first essay María Amor Barros del Río reality is the common factor that links such compares the masculine bildungsroman with its diverse plays from Boucicault’s alteration of the feminine counterpart, the latter being a literary stereotype of “the stage Irishman” to Wilde’s mode which has developed enormously in heterodox linguistic dexterity, without leaving Ireland in the second half of the 20th century. aside the rich linguistic texture of The Playboy of Some representative novels by Kate O’Brien, the Western World. Edna O’Brien, Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, Kate Cruise Samuel Beckett projects his troubled shadow and Moya Roddy are chosen by Amor Barros to in the third chapter and here Rosana Herrero show the new tendencies in the Irish shows a profound knowledge of his intellectual bildungsroman written by women. background. She rightly describes that the source In the second article Silvia Díez Fabre focuses behind Beckett’s endless experimentation on on Somerville and Ross’s famous narrative The stage lies on a solid intellectual basis, namely, Real Charlotte (1894). Hers is an analysis of the his conception of language as a fraudulent main character of the novel, which has normally vehicle of expression. She traces the author’s been described as a monster-woman (an immoral evolution through apprenticeship with Joyce, his arriviste). However, Charlotte is also revealed as contact with the musical and visual arts, his a woman who acts contrary to the passive readings of Fritz Mauthner and his abandonment stereotype of the Victorian “Angel in the house” of English in order to search for his own voice. and who rebels against the patriarchal structures The main dramatic texts of the Irish author are of Irish society. carefully dissected, reaching precise conclusions: In the third chapter I write on masculinity and “Language, in particular, storytelling, is resorted power in Bernard Mac Laverty’s novels and in to by Beckett’s characters as a therapeutic the fourth chapter Asier Altuna analyzes gender method to exorcise loneliness, existential representations in the female characters of two boredom, and above all, to provide their lives theatre plays which evoke a Spanish atmosphere, with an illusion of coherent sequence” (132-3). Spanish Patriots a Thousand Years Ago (1812) Herrero’s chapter on Beckett is formidably by Henry Brereton Code and The Rose of polished and it goes in the opposite direction Arragon (1842) by James Sheridan Knowles. 174

Next, Keith Gregor makes a revision of the of modernity and acknowledges both his sense of impact of contemporary theatre plays written by betrayal for producing a book on his work women in Northern Ireland. In the sixth chapter (Beckett never fostered any interpretative quest the editor of the volume provides a close scrutiny on what he wrote) and the unavoidable failure of of Nora Glynn, a female character in George such endeavour. In any case, he adds in the Moore’s The Lake (1905), using as a theoretical prologue, the articles included in the present frame the joined concepts of woman and nature volume are just tentative approaches, part of an in the dynamic sense that Moore understood exploratory process of interpretation that will them to be. never be finished, that cannot be finished Roddy Doyle’s powerful novel The Woman because the last and extemporaneous modernist Who Walked into Doors (1996) is the subject of will never be fully apprehended. The positive the seventh chapter, written by Marisol Morales effect of volumes like this one is that readers are Ladrón. The novel is a condemnation of encouraged to go back to the texts again, looking domestic violence written in the first person by a for missed nuances and applying new woman who tries to put her thoughts in order and perspectives to their reading. The articles in the explain herself. Morales Ladrón examines book are highly philosophical and tread firmly Doyle’s mordant satire of the institutions which through the imposing regions of theory. allow the exertion of masculinist violence upon Manuel Asensi Pérez, in the first contribution women. to the book, affirms that Beckett’s difficulty Inés Praga Terente considers the echoes of stems from the author’s explicit rejection of García Lorca’s La casa de Bernarda Alba (1936) declarative statements in his work. It is as if in Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa (1990). Beckett foretold what was going to happen when There are many points in common in the the questioning gaze of critics started to pay argument and in the historical contexts recreated attention to his work. The writing he produced, in both plays, despite belonging to different therefore, had the seeds of its own cultural traditions. The representation of women deconstruction and thus dismantled any attempt locked at home and oppressed by an iron-strong towards interpretation. sexual morality truly reflect the real experiences Asensi Pérez considers one instance of such a lived by women in Ireland and Spain for scheme: the abundance of the adversative decades. conjunction but in Molloy. As is well known the In the final chapter Patricia Trainor pays novel exhibits a high degree of hiper-reflexivity: attention to the fascinating figure of Maud at the same time we read Molloy’s story and Gonne, the “Irish Joan of Arch”, who fought all Molloy’s telling of that same story, with the her life for the independence of Ireland with ensuing impossibility of reaching clear articles, lectures and in her activity with regard conclusions. Molloy subverts the traditional to Irish political prisoners. Trainor also provides rhetoric figure of correctio because although he an account of Gonne’s troubled relationship with goes back over his words and tries at all times to W. B. Yeats. redefine what has just been said, no real correction is provided, confusing the reader (and Jiménez Heffernan, Julián, ed. 2007. himself) even more in the process. Rather than Tentativas sobre Beckett. Madrid: Círculo de adjusting the lens, the narrative is de-focalized Bellas Artes. ISBN: 978-84-86418-88-5. and a radical unknowingness is everything that As part of the centenary celebrations we have finally gained. commemorating Samuel Beckett’s birth, a cycle In the second chapter Derek Attridge provides of lectures took place at the Círculo de Bellas a thorough exposition of Beckett’s presence on Artes in Madrid on 2-4 October 2006. The book John Coetzee. The South African writer was one under review is comprised of the revised talks of the many artists who felt fascinated by the presented at that event, edited by Julián Jiménez Irish master and even wrote a scientifically- Heffernan, senior lecturer in English at the inspired Ph.D. dissertation on his work in an University of Córdoba. The editor is aware of attempt to have access to its secrets. Crucial to Beckett’s sacralisation in recent times as an icon Coetzee’s engagement with the fiction of Beckett 175 is the latter’s handling of the English language, Beckett’s seven novels. I would say there are the way he transforms ordinary and sometimes eight of them as Dream of Fair to Middling grim lives into an intense pleasure for the reader. Women is not a mere draft but a fully completed What Coetzee learnt from Beckett, Attridge says, work); this same tradition has always shown a is that style is an aim in itself, not just a road great capacity to reshape itself and to give birth towards meaning. Although the younger writer to new forms which have renewed the genre. admired the comedy in Beckett’s work, his Beckett would belong to this category of novels are tinged with something close to bitter alternative writing as old as the novel itself. irony. Nevertheless, Coetzee was more This appreciation is not completely new. José successful in adopting for his characters the Ángel García Landa in Samuel Beckett y la mechanical, distant, unexciting attitude towards Narración Reflexiva (Zaragoza: Prensas sex that he saw in Beckett’s novels. Universitarias, 1992) also placed Beckett’s prose José Manuel Cuesta Abad tries to solve a fiction in the tradition of the novel. In his study problem in the third chapter of the book. on Beckett’s trilogy, García Landa claimed that Beckett’s work spins over an obsessive concept: Beckett’s subversion of the novelistic genre the idea that his writing seems produced by a implied in fact the conquering of new territories non-entity, the speaking subject being equivalent for this fictional form. It must also be said, to no one saying things that cannot be said. If however, that the concept of anti-novel does not this is so, what kind of experience is worth the necessary cancel any kinship with a previous expression represented in the literary work? For tradition. In his A Dictionary of Narratology Cuesta Abad Beckett’s writing is the place where (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987) the possibility of experience is devoured by the Gerald Prince defines antinarrative merely as “A experience of the impossible. Beckett’s creatures (verbal or nonverbal) text adopting the trappings have something of the unborn, not fully alive nor of narrative but systematically calling narrative completely dead either, half beings for ever logic and narrative conventions into question”, digesting continuously recited words. Beckettian and he mentions Molloy as an example of characters are instances of a verbal flow: they antinarrative. obtain their identity from the verbosity that What is powerfully original is Jiménez builds their individualization. The anti-essential Heffernan’s convincing and wide-ranging humanity in his novels (symbolized by the explanations of the Irish writer’s belonging to a depiction of miserable, poor, forsaken vagrants) pre-existing lineage. He establishes the Gospel as would have as a result the unassailable quality of a primal antecedent for Beckett’s narratives and his writing. proves that Fielding’s classic definition of the Julián Jiménez Heffernan writes what I novel as “a comic Epic-Poem in Prose” is a consider to be the best chapter of the book. He frame that Beckett’s novels conform to. Jiménez posits the thesis that if Beckett, as is commonly Heffernan proposes that for a better asserted, dismantled the Western tradition of understanding of Beckett’s enigmatic work, and narrative, he must have known it well in the first against ethereal interpretations, one has to keep place. In any case for Jiménez Heffernan the in mind that his writing is deeply novel as a literary genre was doomed to anthropomorphic: a human body (or at least part obliterate itself from the very beginning, it was of it) is always represented. A humanistic destined to meet the end of the God-like author, resolution lies behind Beckett’s anthropocentric a state of things that Beckett’s writing perfectly interest. His work, though, would be excised of symbolizes and which is widely accepted today. any moralistic imprint. Jiménez Heffernan claims that Beckett did not Beckett, Jiménez Heffernan states, had no destroy anything and advances powerful reasons: inventiveness, there is nothing to find out or he wrote novels (not anti-novels, Jiménez discover: he registered what was already given Heffernan stresses); there is plenty of evidence in rather than inventing what did not exist. Hence the form of echoes and allusions to show that his Beckett’s preference for the inventory, by means novels are deeply embedded in the long history of which his characters frequently register their of novel writing (Jiménez Heffernan speaks of ridiculous possessions. A revision of Beckett’s 176 obsessive catalogues of things in his novels Gender Perspectives in Irish Studies believe that complements this excellent paper. useful results can be obtained by applying to In the last chapter José A. Sánchez writes Irish studies the theories and views of about scenic image and cinematographic action outstanding critics of postcolonialism. The in Beckett. Tracing an analogy from a picture of articles in this volume, divided into the general the author, Sánchez develops the idea of how areas of “Postcolonialism, language and gender”, Beckett also kept control of his image in his “poetry”, “fiction”, “drama” and “cinema”, also theatre plays: he allowed remnants of his own take into account the sharp perspectives that subjectivity to reach his characters but refrained gender studies may project, so that the present from giving them total capacity of seduction. His book must be understood as an open field where characters are thrown out on stage as bodies to postcolonial studies and feminist studies are seen which fragments of discourses are added. at work in the common objective of capturing Sánchez explores Beckett’s theatrical knowledge updated considerations on the literature and beginning with the description of Roger Blin’s cinema of modern Ireland. mythical staging of Waiting for Godot in 1953. In the first article Isabel Carrera Suárez offers Considerations on the physicality of some a complete panorama of the state of the question. Beckettian characters are also provided. In his She analyzes the consideration that the Irish case theatre and in his radio plays Beckett developed has had in postcolonial theory, from The Empire a kind of visually-focused writing, in the sense Writes Back (1989) by Ashcroft, Griffiths and that he took into consideration the spectator’s Tiffin, to Inventing Ireland (1995), by Declan gaze. Willie in Happy Days is an adequate Kiberd. She reveals that postcolonial studies in example of the way the playwright tried to Ireland have taken ground since the 1980s and control the audience’s way of looking at the for her it is clear that Irish Studies have widened scene. Glances, eyes and ways of looking took the spectrum of postcolonial theory. Key texts an increasing importance in his plays as the which have opened the way for a plural vision of weight of meaning in words was reduced, Ireland, such as The Field Day Anthology of Irish tending towards the creation of scenic objects. In Writing (1991) edited by Seamus Deane, this context, the 1999 project Beckett on Film, in Anomalous States (1993) by David Lloyd or which 19 dramatic works by Beckett were filmed Inventing Ireland are earnestly described. These by different directors, is properly assessed. books have helped to put Ireland under the lens of postcolonialism. On the negative side of this Morales Ladrón, Marisol, ed. 2007. process, Carrera Suárez writes, the contributions Postcolonial and Gender Perspectives in Irish by feminist theorists are still neglected and have Studies. Coruña: Netbiblo. ISBN: 978-0- not yet been integrated into this current of 9729892-6-8. thought. “There is no consensus on the application of In the second article of the collection Asier the term postcolonial to the Irish case” (xix) Altuna focuses on Gaelic and the question of writes Marisol Morales Ladrón in the how it can be considered from a postcolonial introduction to this book. Certainly no simple perspective. Altuna’s first aim is to dive into the answers can be given to the status of Ireland in past and to examine the evolution of the Irish relation to postcolonialism. Many scholars have language and its relationship with power. The alluded to the special characteristics of the necessity of this task is paramount because, in Republic, its “atypical case” within the context Asier Altuna’s words, today’s politicisation of of the former colonies of the British Empire. the Irish language bears a resemblance to cultural Furthermore, a postcolonial adscription to and political tensions of previous centuries (19). Northern Ireland seems controversial and open to In his journey through the history of Gaelic the debate. It is a measure of the editor’s skill that author explains that Irish was an important she has effectively managed to gather a series of element in the intention of the first government articles by Spanish scholars in which the after independence to gaelicise Ireland, although postcolonial approach is unambiguously their initial impetus was somehow tempered with advocated. The contributors to Postcolonial and the passing of time. 177

Historical events like the Great Famine of next chapter in which love discourse is studied. 1845 or the foundation of the Gaelic League in Far from being an abstract universe, unaffected 1893 are viewed from the perspective of their by the events in the world, González Arias effect on the native language of Ireland. proves that love poetry in contemporary women Although many official attempts were made to Irish poets is embedded in the political tug-of- preserve and to promote the language, its real use war that has shaped modern Ireland. Incomplete has been limited. In the postcolonial world we representations of women, constraints imposed live in, hybridity is for Altuna a sign of strength upon their sexuality or the exploration of sensory in the context of the Irish language and he experience are some of the topics dealt with in supports his views with the opinion of authors this examination of the work of Eavan Boland, like Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, for whom the Katie Donovan, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Paula translations from Irish are a modern and Meehan, Dorothy Molloy, Anne Hartigan and acceptable approach to this issue. “Translations” Leanne O’Sullivan. concludes Asier Altuna, “should be conceived as Esther Aliaga Rodrigo’s chapter plunges into a significant component of a global, hybrid and the depths of the conflict in Northern Ireland multicultural Ireland” (38). through the analysis of the recent work of two The following article, written by Manuela novelists of different persuasion, Protestant Palacios, focuses on the poets of Northern Glenn Patterson and Catholic Robert McLiam Ireland, who fill with their work the borderland Wilson. They represent a new generation of between the two frontiers, the two different writers who have struggled to approach the national identities and the two religions. Troubles in a non-sectarian manner, showing an Palacios’s article is a thoughtful and stereotype- eagerness to find flexible and authentic breaking piece of criticism in that she avoids any definitions which may embrace both Manichean polarities regarding the North and the heterogeneity and modernity. South: “We observe in the poetry of the North a María Amor Barros del Río also writes about persistent need to approach the other” (47). novels, but this time focusing on women writers. She considers it problematic to analyse In her chapter she studies three periods in which Northern poetry as a literary entity that is women novelists have tried to search for their unquestionably distinct from that of the own identity outside social and historical Republic, and interrogates its elusiveness. Next, impositions. An ample revision is thus made she presents an overview of the different from Emily Lawless’s Grania (1892) to generations of Northern Ireland poets and Catherine Dunne’s The Walled Garden (2000). revisits well-known poems such as Seamus The seventh chapter is written by Tamara Heaney’s “Punishment”, Michael Longley’s Benito de la Iglesia and she claims that no event “Wounds” and Derek Mahon’s “A Disused Shed has been dealt with so extensively in Irish short in Co. Wexford”, going beyond the mere stories as the Troubles. She studies selected short exposition of the authors’ features of style. stories from the production of four male Irish Leaving open the debate within the articles of the writers whose response to the colonial rule have book, Manuela Palacios shows a different ranged from straight denunciation of abuses from opinion from Asier Altuna regarding translations the security forces to the presentation of violence from Gaelic. For her, it is simply a consequence as a dehumanizing consequence of the conflict. of the predominance of a few global languages: Margarita Estévez Saá also takes into “The problem I see with this is the paradoxical consideration the field of the short story. In her effect that while Gaelic declines, its related contribution she offers revealing insights into the cultural products are only allowed to survive works of contemporary short story women through translation” (60). Far from being a writers who have not normally found a monolithic block, the articles in the book move representation in anthologies of Irish writing. freely around the connections between literature Estévez Saá rejects the accusation that women and postcolonialism, offering different ways to writers do not dare to go beyond realistic and consider the question and to enliven the debate. autobiographical modes and offers the example Luz Mar González Arias is the author of the set by collections from the late nineties and the 178 beginning of the new millennium where literary signifiers of Irishness that have been favoured by experimentation, lyric intensity and the the different productions. Issues of gender, ethics description of modern, urban lives go hand in or detailed aspects such as films in Irish are hand with other stories of a more traditional considered in this finely drawn cartography of content. Ireland on screen. The next chapter introduces us to the field of modern Irish theatre. María del Mar González O’Brien, Flann. 2006. El tercer policía. Héctor Chacón undertakes the task of reading the work Arnau, trad. Madrid: Nórdica Libros. ISBN: of three female playwrights from Nothern 84-934854-8-9. Ireland (Marie Jones, Anne Devlin and Christina O’Brien, Flann. 2007. Crónica de Dalkey. Mª Reid) using a postcolonial perspective. The José Chuliá García, trad. Madrid: Nórdica career of each writer is carefully displayed and Libros. ISBN: 978-84-935578-1-2. special attention is given to the Charabanc Theatre Company, created in Belfast in 1983 by Flann O’Brien is never a duff read. His literary five actresses who established themselves as a talent is what one would get if you mixed James Joyce’s linguistic virtuosity with the content of progressive force devoted to the representation your strangest dreams and left the result in the of the experiences of women in their different middle of a rural Irish pub. His crazy logic has communities, avoiding in their productions the re-enactment of already-formed images. been wonderfully rendered into Spanish in these Rosana Herrero Martín complements the novels (published originally in English in 1967 and 1964) that Nórdica Libros has produced in panoramic view of modern Irish theatre with a the past two years. chapter on Tom Murphy’s A Crucial Week in the In Beatriz Villacañas’s book (see below) it can Life of a Grocer’s Assistant (1969) and Sebastian Barry’s Boss Grady’s Boys (1988). In the two be read that O’Brien’s masterpiece At Swim- plays under analysis there are representations of Two-Birds (1939) was translated into Spanish by José Manuel Álvarez Flórez (En Nadar-Dos- parental overshadowing and this is taken as a Pájaros. Barcelona: Edhasa, 1989) and she adds model to explore the prolonged childhood of the that it was “un acto de valentía”. The editors at Irish State under De Valera’s governments. Nórdica Libros must be lauded therefore for Sebastian Barry’s play shows an interest in giving voice to the dispossessed, while Tom having commissioned these two equally courageous translations. In both versions into Murphy’s achievement is to take on stage dreams Spanish, the first by Héctor Arnau and the and fantasy in a period of stifling parochialism. second by Mª José Chuliá García, the job is done The final chapter of the book, written by Rosa in a very professional and efficient way. O’Brien González Casademont, also constitutes the section devoted to Irish cinema. Hers is an is not a well-known writer in Spain, but with these novels available to buy readers will be able attentive analysis of how Ireland has been to discover and enjoy a highly subversive author. represented in cinema. González Casademont In El tercer policía humour comes naturally offers as well an exhaustively-documented with the adventures of the protagonist and his sampling of films which have somehow attempted to capture in images the essence of obsession with de Selby, a mad scientist who believes that objects (such as bicycles) can Ireland. The article is divided into four sections exchange atoms with their owners (so that they due to an expressed intention of avoiding easy become bicycle-men). In this novel the categorisations. González Casademont examines translation is fluent and rich in nuances. The separately the filmic representation of Ireland in flavour and atmosphere of Irish landscapes can the US, in the UK, the characteristics of be imagined easily, without almost noticing the indigenous cinema, which has developed in the presence of an intermediary. Descriptions of last two decades, and finally a whole section is fields, villages and streets are realistic but at the devoted to the presence of Northern Ireland on same time tinged with a veil of bewilderment, screen. Many well-known films (and others which gives them an almost dream-like quality. which have not transcended the frontiers of the Ireland is described by the protagonist’s father Republic) are commented upon, revealing the as “un país rarito” (10) (“Ireland was a queer 179 country” in the original) and a strange country it dissertation. is indeed, where policemen discourse upon the There are aspects in Seamus Heaney’s work five rules of wisdom or steal people’s bicycles to which have not been studied in detail, Ráez prevent the intermingling of particles. De Selby’s Padilla claims, particularly the symbology of the theories, interspersed in the narrative, are four natural elements: earth, water, air and fire. deliciously absurd, like his comment on roads The aim of the present study is the analysis of being kind to the traveller or unkind if they go in those symbols in Heaney’s poems, especially the wrong direction. those contained in The Spirit Level (1996), where The second book shares the same oneiric the force of nature plays an essential role. In universe of the first one. This time de Selby Heaney’s work there is a balance between the himself is one of the main characters and it is so two types of opposing forces represented by the exultantly funny to read that he has the power to four elements, they engender violence and life at summon the dead. James Joyce turns up and the same time. Ráez Padilla’s study is an attempt denies having written Ulysses. He in fact is to consider these elements in full in relation to presented as a prudish individual who disowns the poet’s writing. that pornographic book and expresses his desire In the first chapter Ráez Padilla goes back to to join the Jesuits. O’Brien was simply a genius. the Pre-Socratic theorisation of the four elements In Crónica de Dalkey Chuliá García makes (Thales of Miletus or Empedocles of Acragas). occasional use of colloquial expressions which He traces the evolution of this theory along are adequate in the context of informal history and how it developed into a literary conversation: “¿Fue un lingotazo de whiskey el framework. fundamento de este follón?” (95) (“Was a feed of In the second chapter he deals with the whiskey the foundation of this rigmarole?” in the different interpretations of Heaney’s oeuvre. original), or “Me las arreglé para salir de Curiously enough, Heaney’s poetry has normally estranjis en un pequeño carguero” (268) (“I been theorised in terms of its earthly quality in managed to sneak across in a small freighter”). his first period (rooted in Northern Irish history However, I object to her abundant use of and culture), and its airy characteristics in a translator’s notes. I really think she goes too far second stage, in which the poet searches for in her attempt to make the cultural references freedom and cuts himself from former ties. accessible to Spanish readers. Notes should be According to Ráez Padilla, the assignation of the treated in literary works like Tabasco sauce: it “airy phase” for Seamus Heaney’s poetry is must be used with care and never splashed inaccurate. Critics have not agreed on the precise around. Chuliá García includes too many point of transition between the two periods. comments, sometimes to explain puns, others to Earth, furthermore, continues to be a leitmotiv in illuminate a particular reference in the text (in this second period. For the Spanish scholar some cases adding unnecessary information), reading Heaney’s poetry in binary terms is not with the result that the translator becomes an right and instead he proposes an interpretation in uncomfortable presence in what otherwise is a complementary terms, earth and air. The Irish perfectly acceptable version of O’Brien’s novel. poet’s work would move in the space created by this tension. Ráez Padilla, Juan. 2007. Los cuatro elementos In the third chapter Ráez Padilla proceeds on y Seamus Heaney: de la cosmogonía helénica a an informative journey through the way the four la cosmopoética de The Spirit Level (1996). elements have been interpreted in literary Jaén: Servicio de Publicaciones de la criticism, including recent theories such as Universidad. ISBN: 978-84-8439-317-7. gender studies. He also offers a new deliberation Juan Ráez Padilla is a young scholar from the based on a global perspective. In the final University of Jaén who has just published his chapter of his dissertation, he applies this frame Ph.D. dissertation on Seamus Heaney. His thesis of reference to the study of The Spirit Level. comes in a nicely presented format which Four approaches are employed to study the contains a CD with the full academic research poems: ambivalence of the symbols, dialectic and a book with a complete summary of his interrelationships between them, movement and 180 combination. Emphasis is made on those aspects prepare the ground for a rebellion against where Heaney’s poetics remain apart from England with the help of the Irish exiles in traditional symbology and which represent his America. Finally, Marta Ramón’s study is a search for balance. revision and in many cases a correction of In his conclusions Ráez Padilla defines the previous approaches to Stephens’s figure. terms of the discussion and asserts that Pre- According to the author, Stephens’s political Socratic spiritualism pervades over Heaney’s thinking and his personal traits have only been work: opposing principles are reconciled and described partially or without taking into account spirit and body are frequently fused. “It is worth a comprehensive scholarly research. Ramón aims noting that, bearing in mind this hierarchy, the to provide an all-inclusive assessment of poetry of Seamus Heaney would diverge from Stephens’s revolutionary career, and consequent- the masculinity (air and fire) of the dominant ly begins her account with Stephens’s symbolic discourse (reason, spirituality, light, participation in the Young Ireland’s 1848 warmth,…) in favour of the inspirational feminity insurrection. of intuition, corporeality, coldness, darkness” The Young Irelanders were a new generation (167). Contrary to the critical response to The of nationalist leaders who seceded from Spirit Level, where an airy vision is preferred, O’Connell’s Repeal Association for want of a Ráez Padilla considers the downwards more direct form of action against the colonial movements in this book (the symbolic complex power. Starting from that point, Ramón dives of Janus, he writes, two sides of the same coin) into the murky waters of Irish Nationalist politics as an opposite force to the “etherealisation” in of those years, giving in profuse detail the his poetry. motives behind every secession, division and Politics are not wholly ignored despite such confrontation inside a movement torn by internal abstract theorisation of the elements. The strife. Almost every new initiative was followed interaction between air and earth, in fact, reveals by the withdrawal of some members from the Heaney’s indeterminacy and acknowledged association with their former colleagues because confusion on the role of the poet in society. they demanded more energetic measures against Uncertainty in Heaney, says Ráez Padilla, must British laws. The history of the Irish expatriates not be understood in a negative sense but as a at the other side of the Atlantic, the Fenian legitimate emotional response. It could not be Brotherhood, had a similar record of division. otherwise, he adds, in a poet subject to such Ramón’s range of vision is wide enough to antagonistic pressures (England/Ireland, consider the evolution of international conflicts Catholicism/Protestantism, social ethics/poetic (the French insurrection of 1848, The Crimean ethics, etc.). Symbols are used in his poetry to War, the American Civil War, etc.) as well as represent his own personal complex universe and internal events (the Potato Famine) and their at the same time they represent a temporary impact on the Irish revolutionaries, as they were release from oppressive systems of thought. always waiting for England’s weakness in order to start their own armed confrontation. But at all Ramón, Marta. 2007. A Provisional Dictator. times this extensive point of view is James Stephens and the Fenian Movement. accompanied by a precise rendering of personal Dublin: University College Dublin Press. documents such as letters, diaries, newspaper ISBN: 978-1-904558-64-4. articles or police reports. This enables the author A Provisional Dictator is a chronicle of the to tread firmly on uncertain ground, as when she history of Ireland after Daniel O’Connell’s deals with Stephens’s early years. “We now have Catholic Association, a period that covers reason to believe” the author states “that James roughly the first and second decades of the Stephens was born out of wedlock late in July second half of the 19th century. The book is also 1825” (25). The illegitimacy of his birth would a political biography insofar as the author help to understand some personal attributes of focuses on the person of James Stephens, head of the future revolutionary leader, like his egotism, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, a secret his intellectual ambition or his megalomania, as society created in March 1858 destined to he felt the need to assert himself against a 181 desolate origin. Villacañas, Beatriz. 2007. Literatura irlandesa. In the narrative, for that is what any historical Madrid: Síntesis. ISBN: 978-84-975647-4-8. account finally is, even in a thoughtful and well- Beatriz Villacañas has written an easily documented book as this one, it is compelling for readable and at the same time well-documented the reader to witness Stephens’s escape to France manual on Irish literature. Her starting points, after the failure of the Ballingarry skirmish in stated in the introduction to the book, show that 1848, his impressions of Paris, his learning and common sense has been the ruling principle of progress in contact with foreign revolutionaries, her task. Firstly, Irish literature must be studied and his return to Ireland in 1855. Stephens’s independently from English literature (although arrest by the police on 11 November 1865 and at any time all kinds of connections between his ensuing escape from Richmond Prison two both must be made). Secondly, Irish literature, weeks later conveys a substantial dose of perhaps more than any literature in the world, emotion. I believe this combination of dramatic must be contextualised: an understanding of the vigour and authoritative consultation of original history of rebellion of a great part of the Irish documents is something to be praised. people against a colonizing power must be Ramón is, in general, sympathetic to the main paramount, but also the differentiated nature of character although she keeps a wary eye on two kinds of population groups, the Anglo-Irish Stephens’s decisions and is able to express doubt and the Gaelic stock, as well as their religious about his high ideals: “For over a year after his differences. Finally, the approach to such a arrival in France he could not (would not?) find heterogeneous material must be at the same time employment…” (50). Likewise the author’s general and specific, rigorous in the detailed denunciation of unacceptable deeds is normally account of each individual author but ample tempered by the necessary distance. When enough to take into account the historical explaining Stephens’s bullying tactics against his circumstances of each period. competitors when the rebels’ newspaper The Considering that Villacañas’s manual consists Irish People was launched in 1863, Ramón of 200 pages (glossary of useful terms, admits that “It is easy to perceive an chronology and bibliography not included), it has uncomfortable flavour of proto-Fascism in to be said that the author passes the test with Stephens’s attitude” (144). And then she adds on aplomb. Villacañas is likewise careful to explain the same page: “Still – leaving assassination that hers is a history of Irish literature written in aside – it is difficult to imagine a different set of English, although she does not forget the rich tactics that could be employed by an illegal and suggestive corpus of epic and myth revolutionary organization in attempting to belonging to the island’s Celtic past. overthrow a government and neutralise After a brief but illustrative section on the opposition from its adversaries” (144). Ramón history of Ireland, in the second chapter the thus manages to keep herself on the thin line that author puts into practice her method of analysis divides the expression of judgements on the past with the discussion of the Anglo-Irish writers of and the professional, objective account of the the colonial period: Lawrence Sterne, Jonathan historian. Swift and Thomas Moore. Villacañas manages to The book is a great achievement as regards the offer a balanced account of each of the writers strenuous work involved in the research of such she deals with. Jonathan Swift, for instance, is facts as Stephens’s visits to America and the presented as the first Anglo-Irish author to complex map of circumstances that determined denounce the injustice of the colonial system, the nature of the Fenian movement in the United although he basically defended the rights of his States, which is told with a faultless command. own class. The final two chapters, devoted to Stephens’s The fact that the author includes excerpts from fall from power and to the vain rising of March many of the writers under study together with 1867, when he no longer influenced the destinies their translation into Spanish, and fragments of of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, are selected criticism, reinforces the divulgative completed with an appropriate account of the intention of the book. Terence Brown, Hugh dethroned leader’s final years. Kenner, George Watson, Declan Kiberd, Robert 182

Hughes and Inés Praga are quoted at large and Irish Diaspora and with a selection of poems then translated into Spanish. I interpret this as an translated and commented by the author offer an example of Villacañas’s honesty: an enterprise interesting supplement to the volume. These two like writing the history of Irish literature cannot last chapters, in fact, testify to the divulgative be accomplished without the assistance of scope of the book despite its relatively few fundamental names in Irish criticism. pages. Together with the unfortunately no longer The chapters proceed in chronological order available Diccionario cultural e histórico de without an alteration in the method already Irlanda by Hurtley, Hughes, González described: the first half of the nineteenth century Casademont, Praga and Aliaga (Barcelona: Ariel, and the beginning of the ‘Big House’ novel; the 1996) Literatura irlandesa would be a volume to Victorian Gothic of Sheridan Le Fanu and Bram strongly recommend to those wishing to Stoker; the translations from Irish of James introduce themselves into Irish culture. Clarence Mangan or the naturalist narratives of George Moore, just to mention a few names. Villar-Argáiz, Pilar. 2007. Eavan Boland’s There is a whole chapter devoted to Wilde and Evolution as an Irish Woman Poet. An Shaw, and another one on the Irish Literary Outsider Within an Outsider’s Culture. Renaissance. The section on Wilde avoids Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press. ISBN: hackneyed notions on the dramatist, dealing 978-0-7734-5383-8. instead with Wilde’s Irishness and his not always Admirers of Eavan Boland’s poetry will be clearly-understood ethics. grateful to Pilar Villar-Argáiz because this Villacañas is equally sharp in her description lecturer from the University of Granada has of the founding of the Abbey Theatre and the written a valuable examination of the work of contradictions that the movement led by Lady one of Ireland’s finest women poets. Pilar Villar- Gregory and W.B. Yeats fell into. For the Argáiz’s study is interesting because she cultivated Anglo-Irish literati, the urban Catholic considers Boland’s poetry under a dual feminist middle-classes represented a dullness and and postcolonial framework. She therefore starts vulgarity that they wanted to avoid at all costs, from the assumption of Irish literature as a but those drab people had worked and fought all postcolonial cultural production, but their lives for the independence of their country. complements her analysis with a feminist As Villacañas remarks, “El Abbey fue el punto approach. de desencuentro entre estas dos Irlandas” (66). Women in Ireland, it is stated in the book, Many other aspects are similarly clarified in have been doubly colonized, both by imperialism each chapter without a recourse to simplification. from abroad and by a restrictive nationalism at Synge, for example, forced the language in his home. Accordingly, the theories of Frantz Fanon plays into a perhaps abusive use of Hiberno- and Albert Memmi, who have written on the English, but his was at the same time a true stages of oppression, protest and liberation of the representation of the colourful language of the postcolonial writer, on the one hand, and the Irish people. three phases of women’s writing (feminine, There is an efficient chapter on James Joyce, feminist and female) articulated by Elaine another one on literature after independence and Showalter, on the other, are employed to assess a further section on contemporary literature. the different periods of Boland’s evolution as a Here the authors are exposed briefly, as befits a woman poet. period so rich in various literary forms. One After the introductory remarks, Pilar Villar- would have liked the author of Literatura Argáiz addresses the issue of how Eavan Boland irlandesa to expand more on personal favourites began her literary career. In her two first like Bernard Mac Laverty or Medbh McGuckian, volumes of poetry (Eavan Boland Poetry, 1963, and to write a few lines on Aidan Higgins, but it and New Territory, 1967) the writer is presented is true that longer explanations or the inclusion as an uncertain individual wanting to be accepted of all writers of the last fifty years would have by the poetic community. This was her feminine resulted in an altogether different book. or assimilationist phase, where she concealed the The two final chapters, dealing with the woman in her and remained attached to her 183

(male) literary forefathers. Yeats’s great considered damaging for her reality as a woman. influence on the fledging poet is dutifully In this second step of her development Boland considered here. It is also explained that Boland advocated her right to be in control of the maintained in her work a detached position from subjects of the poem. Villar-Argáiz revealingly the poetic figures she represented. explores how Boland reclaimed taboo areas of Villar-Argáiz analyses different poems of this female experience and connects the new first period and discovers in them affinities with perspective that the poet found in her inside the struggling woman poet trying to journey with Boland’s reading at the time of accommodate herself to pre-existing modes. Adrienne Rich’s work. Poetry and theory are Here we find an exercise in blending theory and fused again in a densely woven discourse and all practice which will be repeated in subsequent aspects of the poems in In Her Own Image are chapters and which is one of the assets of this discussed, like the alienating linguistic volume. Villar-Argáiz has not tried to force her techniques that Boland took hold of in order to subject of study, Boland’s poetry, into the denounce the corruption exerted by male- disciplined methodological moulds she has set centered myths (obsessive depiction of special for the task. At the beginning of the next chapter, imagery, avoidance of possessive constructions in which she discusses Boland’s second in the first person, etc.). Boland entered with this “feminist” phase (or the “cultural nationalist” book in disturbing territories, like alternative one in terms of Fannon and Memmi), Villar- visions of child-bearing and maternal love, Argáiz chooses In Her Own Image (1980) as a although she did not escape an essentialist view representative book of this period, and she states of women in her new assertion of the self. that a previous volume of poems, The War Horse The final chapter of the volume discovers (1975) will be used to comment on Boland’s Boland in her mature phase, an artist who has third phase, thus disturbing the logic of a reached an autonomous self-expression, free chronological sequence. But here Villar-Argáiz from the dependence of opposing terms and fully is doing nothing but admitting that literature is independent of the literary mainstream. The not one of the exact sciences: “Although poems analysed here cover a wide spectrum, Boland’s evolution as a poet underlies a process from The War Horse (1975) to The Journey of increasing poetic maturity (a process of initial (1986), In a Time of Violence (1994), Outside imitation, intermediate protest, and final artistic History (1990), The Lost Land (1998) and Code autonomy), the departure from the inherited (2001). Villar-Argáiz describes Boland giving poetic tradition is not an easy step to take, and voice to her own experiences as a woman, as a Boland, on her journey towards attaining artistic citizen and as a poet, that is, avoiding any decolonisation, shows backward and forward attempt at constructing a poetic identity in movements” (99). essentialist terms. We are, in fact, in what It is very illustrative to turn regularly to the Showalter denominates a “deliberate female appendix where an interview with the author is aesthetic” or Fanon and Memmi a “liberating” recorded (an unusual and gratifying surprise in a writing. book of this kind), where Boland for instance This chapter, which is complexly drawn and comments upon her beginnings as a writer: “It’s where the author has delved more fully into her hard to get to those poems in my mind. I haven’t subject, is divided in four sections: the first one opened any of them in twenty or thirty years. I focuses on Boland’s main source of her poetic was a teenager, and an immature one at that. I creativity: her life as a suburban married mother. think real feeling went into them, but no craft” The second section is dedicated to Boland’s (398). deconstruction of poetic identity. Here her poetry Contrary to those initial texts, In Her Own will be analyzed according to Mikhail Bakhtin’s Image is defined by Villar-Argáiz as a ground- theory of hybridisation, again stepping aside breaking volume in Boland’s career, as she from a constrained theoretical imposition, just as expressed her womanhood against the canon of in the previous chapter Villar-Argáiz turned to traditional Irish poetry. She angrily attacked various feminist critics such as Cixous and those aspects of patriarchal society that she Irigaray. The third section considers Boland’s 184

attempt to give voice to those lived experiences dominant nationalist discourses. As Villar- that lie unrecorded by nationalist historical Argáiz writes, her most recent poems move accounts. Finally, in the fourth section, which towards the possibility of conceiving identity in explores Boland’s exile in the United States, the terms of fluidity and boundary crossing. poet is presented psychologically detached from