The Cambridge Companion to the Irish Novel

by John Wilson Foster

• ISBN13: 9780521861915
• ISBN10: 0521861918
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-12-25
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The Irish novel has had a distinguished history. It spans such diverse authors as James Joyce, George Moore, Maria Edgeworth, Bram Stoker, Flann O'Brien, Samuel Beckett, Lady Morgan, John Banville, and others. Yet it has until now received less critical attention than Irish poetry and drama. This volume covers three hundred years of Irish achievement in fiction, with essays on key genres, themes, and authors. It provides critiques of individual works, accounts of important novelists, and histories of sub-genres and allied narrative forms, establishing significant social and political contexts for dozens of novels. The varied perspectives and emphases by more than a dozen critics and literary historians ensure that the Irish novel receives due tribute for its colour, variety and linguistic verve. Each chapter features recommended further reading. This is the perfect overview for students of the Irish novel from the romances of the seventeenth century to the present day.

Table of Contents

Notes on contributors	vii
Acknowledgment	ix
Chronology	x
Introduction
JOHN WILSON FOSTER	1
1 The novel before 1800
AILEEN DOUGLAS	22
2 The national tale and allied genres, 17705-1840's
MIRANDA BURGESS	39
3 The novel of the big house
VERA KREILKAMP	60
4 The Gothic novel
SIOBHÁN KILFEATHER	78
5 Catholics and fiction during the Union, 1801-1922
JAMES H. MURPHY	97
6 Irish modernisms, 1880-1930
ADRIAN FRAZIER	113
7 James Joyce
BRUCE STEWART	133
8 Region, realism and reaction, 1922-1972
NORMAN VANCE	153
9 The novel in Irish
ALAN TITLEY	171
10 Women novelists, 1930's-1960's
ANN OWENS WEEKES	189
11 Two post-modern novelists: Samuel Beckett and Flann O'Brien
TERENCE BROWN	205
12 Life writing in the twentieth century
ELIZABETH GRUBGELD	223
13 The novel and the Northern Troubles
ELMER KENNEDY-ANDREWS	238
14 Contemporary Irish fiction
EVE PATTEN	259
Index	276