A History of the Irish Novel

The first critical synthesis of the Irish novel from the seventeenth century to the present day.

Derek Hand (Author)

9781107674271, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 16 October 2014

262 pages
22.8 x 15.1 x 2 cm, 0.5 kg

'Accessible, wide-ranging and critically discerning, this is the most comprehensive introduction to the subject that we have.' Irish Times

Derek Hand's A History of the Irish Novel is a major work of criticism on some of the greatest and most globally recognisable writers of the novel form. Writers such as Laurence Sterne, James Joyce, Elizabeth Bowen, Samuel Beckett and John McGahern have demonstrated the extraordinary intellectual range, thematic complexity and stylistic innovation of Irish fiction. Derek Hand provides a remarkably detailed picture of the Irish novel's emergence in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He shows the story of the genre is the story of Ireland's troubled relationship to modernisation. The first critical synthesis of the Irish novel from the seventeenth century to the present day, this is a major book for the field, and the first to thematically, theoretically and contextually chart its development. It is an essential, entertaining and highly original guide to the history of the Irish novel.

Introduction: a history of the Irish novel: 1665–2010
Interchapter: Virtue Rewarded, or, The Irish Princess: burgeoning silence and the new novel form in Ireland
1. Beginnings and endings: writing from the margins 1665–1800
Interchapter: beyond history: Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent
2. Speak not my name or, the wings of Minerva: Irish fiction 1800–1891
Interchapter: Edith Somerville and Martin Ross's The Real Charlotte: the blooming menagerie
3. Living in a time of epic: the Irish novel and literary revival and revolution, 1891–1922
Interchapter: James Joyce's Ulysses: choosing life
4. Irish independence and the bureaucratic imagination: 1922–1939
Interchapter: Elizabeth Bowen's The Last September and the art of betrayal
5. Enervated island – isolated Ireland? 1940–1960
Interchapter: John Banville's Doctor Copernicus: a revolution in the head
6. The struggle of making it new 1960–1979
Interchapter: Seamus Deane's Reading in the Dark and the rebel act of interpretation
7. Brave new worlds – Celtic tigers and moving statues: 1979 to the present day
Interchapter: John McGahern's That They May Face the Rising Sun: saying the very last things
Conclusion: the future of the Irish novel in the global literary marketplace
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK]