William Trevor Revaluations

by Delaney, Paul; Parker, Michael

• ISBN13: 9780719087905
• ISBN10: 0719087902
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-10-31
• Publisher: MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS

Summary

William Trevor: Revaluations offers a comprehensive examination of the oeuvre of one of the most accomplished and celebrated practitioners writing in the English language: the author of fifteen novels, three novellas and eleven volumes of short stories, as well as plays, radio and TV adaptations and film screenplays.

Drawing on the talents of a team of distinguished international scholars, this volume shines a critical light on Trevor's core concerns with individuality and the family, and cultural and national identity, extending significantly the scope of current scholarship. Essays scrutinise the author's prolonged concern with domestic, communal and national violence, his interrogation of patterns of inheritance and ideological heritage, and the impact of the past on choices his characters make.

William Trevor: Revaluations is a groundbreaking collection of essays, and will also be seen as a definitive introduction to the work of a major contemporary novelist and short-story writer.

Author Biography

Paul Delaney is Lecturer in Irish Writing in English at Trinity College, Dublin.

Michael Parker is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Central Lancashire.

Table of Contents

Introduction – Paul Delaney and Michael Parker
Part One
1. Learnt by Heart: William Trevor and reading – Hermione Lee
2. In Another Country: Aspects of Trevor's England – George O'Brien
3. 'Compassion Thrown to the Winds': William Trevor and Postcolonial London –C.L. Innes
4. 'The Battlefield Has Never Quietened': Political Violence in the Fiction of William Trevor – Elmer Kennedy-Andrews
5. William Trevor's Screen Fictions: 'No Interest. Not Suitable for Treatment' – Lance Pettitt
Part Two
6. The Ireland That We Dreamed Of?: 'The Ballroom of Romance' – Tina O'Toole
7. 'Moments and Subtleties and Shadows of Grey': Reflections on the Narrative Mode of Fools of Fortune – Michael O'Neill
8. 'Bid me strike a match and blow': The Silence in the Garden – Derek Hand
9. The Tragedy of the Return of History: 'Lost Ground' – Jennifer M. Jeffers
10. The Power of Withholding: Politics, Gender and Narrative Technique in Felicia's Journey – Michael Parker
11. '... as if she were a symbol of something ...': The Story of Lucy Gault – Tom Herron
12. 'The art of the glimpse': Cheating at Canasta – Paul Delaney
13. Character, Community and Critical Nostalgia: Love and Summer – Heidi Hansson
Bibliography and Filmography
Index