Contemporary Irish Fiction Themes, Tropes, Theories [Paperback]

Recent years have witnessed an extraordinary growth in the richness and diversity of Irish fiction, with the publication of highly original and often challenging work by both new and established writers. Contemporary Irish Fiction provides an invaluable introduction to this exciting but largely uncharted area of literary criticism by bringing together twelve accessible, stimulating essays by critics from Ireland, Britain and North America.Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction; L.Harte & M.Parker The Right to the City: Re-presentations of Dublin in Contemporary Irish Fiction; G.Smyth The Aesthetics of Exile; G.O'Brien Re-citing the Rosary: Women, Catholicism and Agency in Brian Moore's Cold Heaven and John McGahern's Amongst Women; S.Holland Versions of Banville: Versions of Modernism; J.McMinn Figuring the Mother in Contemporary Irish Fiction; A.O.Weekes Petrifying Time: Incest Narratives from Contemporary Ireland; C.St Peter New Noise from the Woodshed: The Novels of Emma Donoghue; A.Quinn ContamiNation: Patrick McCabe and Colm Toibin's Pathologies of the Republic; T.Herron 'The Pose Arranged and Lingered Over': Visualizing the 'Troubles'; R.Haslam Bourgeois Redemptions: The Fictions of Glenn Patterson and Robert McLiam Wilson; R.Kirkland Reconfiguring Identities: Recent Northern Irish Fiction; L.Harte & M.Parker Bibliography Index

'This timely volume addresses the substantial and growing body of work by contemporary Irish novelists, and helps us to understand the forces and energies that drive their achievement and success. These stimulating essays offer fresh insights into the preoccupations of some of Ireland's most gifted writers, as they try to tell the story of the inner life of a society that is changing at a tremendous pace, while also remaining strange, alluring and deadly.' - Robert Welch, Professor of English, University of Ulster, editor of The Oxford Companion to Irish Literature

'...the collection offerslÓE