Overview

The underlying premise of this book is that reading is touching. Words leap out of their beds and pierce flesh like a knife. Storytelling breathes within the dynamic of encounters with air, fire, earth and water, permeated by emotion, imagination and touch. These ideas are contextualized within ancient community rituals, social justice gatherings, pedagogical practices, and map-making. The four elements are retrieved from exile as imaginative, corporeal, and generative substances that operate within stories like medicine bundles. Reading becomes a Deleuzian 'enterprise of health', a challenging experience that grasps Paulo Freire's generative themes, and is simultaneously thought-provoking and valuable. The capacious literary space capable of housing this sensual ferment is the novel. More verb than noun, the novel is an elemental bundle that engages with flesh in all its manifestations. This book spotlights Irish novels by John Banville and Mary Morrissy, exploring how they revitalise the elements with sensual, social, and tactile textures.

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9781527542990

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Claire McGrail Johnston holds a doctorate in Irish Literature and a Master's degree in Adult Education. She has taught within adult and community education both in England and Ireland, advocating widening participation in lifelong learning. Her research activities centre upon literary studies, especially the philosophy of reading, aspects of the Gothic, and Irish literature, and are underpinned by how the human relationship with the elemental world manifests within literary texts in diverse ways. From an educational perspective, she is interested in how literature and art can be valuable within creative and social justice pedagogies, and has put these ideas into practice by developing and presenting courses on enjoying literature, creative writing, as well as poetry and performance workshops. She also has associations with Mary Immaculate College, Limerick University, the Workers' Educational Association, and Liverpool Hope University.

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