Irish Literature Since 1990 Examines the Diversity and Energy of Writing in a Period Marked by the Unparalleled Global Prominence of Irish Culture
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BREW0009 15/5/09 11:17 am Page 1 Irish literature since 1990 Irish literature since 1990 examines the diversity and energy of writing in a period marked by the unparalleled global prominence of Irish culture. The book is distinctive in bringing together scholars from across Europe and the United States, whose work explores Irish literary culture from a rich variety of critical perspectives. This collection provides a wide-ranging survey of fiction, poetry and drama over the last two decades, considering both well-established figures and newer writers who have received relatively little critical attention before. It also considers creative work in cinema, visual culture and the performing arts. Contributors explore the central developments within Irish culture and society that have transformed the writing and reading of identity, sexuality, history and gender. The volume examines the contexts from which the literature emerges, including the impact of Mary Robinson’s presidency in the Irish Republic; the new buoyancy of the Irish diaspora, and growing cultural confidence ‘back home’; legislative reform on sexual and moral issues; the uneven effects generated by the resurgence of the Irish economy (the ‘Celtic Tiger’ myth); Ireland’s increasingly prominent role in Europe; the declining reputation of established institutions and authorities in the Republic (corruption trials and Church scandals); the Northern Ireland Peace Process, and the changing relationships it has made possible. In its breadth and critical currency, this book will be of particular BREWSTER interest to academics and students working in the fields of literature, drama and cultural studies. Scott Brewster is Director of English at the University of Salford Michael Parker is Professor of English Literature at the University of Central Lancashire AND Cover image: ‘Collecting Meteorites at Knowth, IRELANTIS’. Collage by Seán Hillen, 1996. PARKER www.seanhillen.com Design: www.riverdesign.co.uk Irish literature since 1990 Diverse voices ISBN 978-0-7190-7563-6 9 7 8 0 7 1 9 0 7 5 6 3 6 www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk SCOTT BREWSTER AND MICHAEL PARKER 9780719075636_1_pre.qxd 17/2/09 2:11 PM Page i Irish literature since 1990 9780719075636_1_pre.qxd 17/2/09 2:11 PM Page ii 9780719075636_1_pre.qxd 17/2/09 2:11 PM Page iii 9780719075636_1_pre.qxd 17/2/09 2:11 PM Page iii Irish literature since 1990 Diverse voices Irish literature since 1990 Diverseedited by voicesScott Brewster and Michael Parker edited by Scott Brewster and Michael Parker Manchester University Press Manchester and New York distributed in the United States exclusively byManchester Palgrave UniversityMacmillan Press Manchester and New York distributed in the United States exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan Copyright © Manchester University Press 2009 While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of both author and publisher. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7190 7563 6 hardback ISBN 978 0 7190 8560 4 paperback ISBN 978 1 5261 2514 9 open access First published 2009 This electronic version has been made freely available under a Creative Commons (CC-BY-NC-ND) licence. A copy of the licence can be viewed at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Typeset by Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong 9780719075636_1_pre.qxd 17/2/09 2:11 PM Page v Contents Acknowledgements page vii Notes on contributors viii Part I: Contexts 1 ‘Changing history: the Republic and Northern Ireland since 1990’ Michael Parker 3 2 ‘Flying high? Culture, criticism, theory since 1990’ Scott Brewster 16 Part II: Drama 3 ‘Home places: Irish drama since 1990’ Clare Wallace and OndPej PílnM 43 4 Women on stage in the 1990s: foregrounding the body and performance in plays by Gina Moxley, Emma Donoghue and Marina Carr Mária Kurdi 59 5 The stuff of tragedy? Representations of Irish political leaders in the ‘Haughey’ plays of Carr, Barry and Breen Anthony Roche 79 6 New articulations of Irishness and otherness on the contemporary Irish stage Martine Pelletier 98 Part III: Poetry 7 Scattered and diverse: Irish poetry since 1990 Jerzy Jarniewicz and John McDonagh 121 8 Architectural metaphors: representations of the house in the poetry of Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Vona Groarke Lucy Collins 142 9 ‘The places I go back to’: familiarisation and estrangement in Seamus Heaney’s later poetry Joanna Cowper 160 9780719075636_1_pre.qxd 17/2/09 2:11 PM Page vi vi Contents 10 ‘Neither here nor there’: new generation Northern Irish poets (Sinéad Morrissey and Nick Laird) Michael Parker 177 Part IV: Fiction and autobiography 11 ‘Tomorrow we will change our names, invent ourselves again’: Irish fiction and autobiography since 1990 Liam Harte 201 12 Anne Enright and postnationalism in the contemporary Irish novel Heidi Hansson 216 13 ‘Sacred spaces’: writing home in recent Irish memoirs and autobiographies (John McGahern’s Memoir, Hugo Hamilton’s The Speckled People, Seamus Deane’s Reading in the Dark and John Walsh’s The Falling Angels) Stephen Regan 232 14 Secret gardens: unearthing the truth in Patrick O’Keeffe’s The Hill Road Vivian Valvano Lynch 250 15 ‘What’s it like being Irish?’ The return of the repressed in Roddy Doyle’s Paula Spencer Jennifer M. Jeffers 258 16 Remembering to forget: Northern Irish fiction after the Troubles Neal Alexander 272 Part V: After words 17 ‘What do I say when they wheel out their dead?’ The representation of violence in Northern Irish art Shane Alcobia-Murphy 287 Bibliography 309 Index 327 9780719075636_1_pre.qxd 17/2/09 2:11 PM Page vii Acknowledgements We would like to thank our contributors, and Matthew Frost at Manchester University Press, for their patience, good humour and wise counsel as this volume was being assembled. We would also like to acknowledge formally the following publishers for granting permission to use quotations: from The Irish for No and Belfast Confetti by Ciaran Carson, by kind permission of the author and The Gallery Press, Loughcrew, Oldcastle, County Meath, Ireland, and Wake Forest University Press. from Other People’s Houses, Flight and Juniper Street by Vona Groarke, by kind permission of the author and The Gallery Press, Loughcrew, Oldcastle, County Meath, Ireland, and Wake Forest University Press. from To a Fault by Nick Laird by permission of the author and Faber and Faber Ltd. US permission: copyright © 2006 by Nick Laird. Used by permission of W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. from Selected Poems by Michael Longley, published by Jonathan Cape, reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd and Wake Forest University Press. from There Was Fire in Vancouver, Between Here and There and The State of the Prisons by kind permission of the author and Carcanet Press. from Site of Ambush, The Second Voyage, The Rose Geranium, The Magdalene Sermon, The Brazen Serpent, The Girl who Married a Reindeer by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, by kind permission of the author and The Gallery Press, Loughcrew, Oldcastle, County Meath, Ireland, and Wake Forest University Press. 9780719075636_1_pre.qxd 17/2/09 2:11 PM Page viii Notes on Contributors Neal Alexander is a Lecturer in English at Trinity College Carmarthen, University of Wales. He co-edited (with Shane Murphy and Anne Oakman) The Other Shore: Cross-currents in Irish and Scottish Studies (2004) and has published essays on literary representations of Belfast, Northern Irish fiction and poetry, and the autobiographies of W.B. Yeats and R.S. Thomas. He is currently working on a book-length critical study of Ciaran Carson. Scott Brewster is Director of English at the University of Salford. He co-edited Ireland in Proximity: History, Gender, Space (1999), and has published widely on Northern Irish poetry, the Gothic, deconstruc- tion and psychoanalysis. Lyric will appear in the Routledge Critical Idiom series in 2009. He is currently President of EFACIS (European Federation of Associations and Centres for Irish Studies). Lucy Collins is a Lecturer at the University of Cumbria and was a research associate at Boston College Ireland in 2007–8. She has published widely on modern Irish poets including Austin Clarke, Thomas Kinsella and Eileán Ní Chuilleanáin, as well as on American poetry from the 1950s onwards. She is currently completing a monograph on contemporary women’s poetry from Ireland. Joanna Cowper studied English Literature at the University of Durham, where she developed an interest in twentieth-century Irish and American poetry. Following her graduation, she embarked upon a career in marketing in the publishing industry, completing the CIM Professional Diploma in Marketing before returning to academic study at Oxford University. She is currently working as Marketing Manager for two Oxford-based companies, and frequently contributes material to a range of historical publications. 9780719075636_1_pre.qxd 17/2/09 2:11 PM Page ix Notes on contributors ix Heidi Hansson is Professor of English Literature at Umeå University, Sweden. Her main research interest is women’s literature, and she has previously published in the fields of postmodern romance, nineteenth- century women’s cross-gendered writing, and Irish women’s literature. She has recently completed a full-length examination of the nineteenth- century writer Emily Lawless, Emily Lawless 1845–1913: Writing the Interspace (Cork University Press, 2007) and the edited collection New Contexts and Readings: Re-Framing Irish Nineteenth-Century Women’s Prose: (Cork University Press, 2008).