Overview

The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Fiction presents authoritative essays by thirty-five leading scholars of Irish fiction. They provide in-depth assessments of the breadth and achievement of novelists and short story writers whose collective contribution to the evolution and modification of these unique art forms has been far out of proportion to Ireland's small size. The volume brings a variety of critical perspectives to bear on the development of modern Irish fiction, situating authors, texts, and genres in their social, intellectual, and literary historical contexts.The Handbook's coverage encompasses an expansive range of topics, including the recalcitrant atavisms of Irish Gothic fiction; nineteenth-century Irish women's fiction and its influence on emergent modernism and cultural nationalism; the diverse modes of irony, fabulism, and social realism that characterize the fiction of the Irish Literary Revival; the fearless aesthetic radicalism of James Joyce; the jolting narratological experiments of Samuel Beckett, Flann O'Brien, and Máirtín Ó Cadhain; the fate of the realist and modernist traditions in the work of Elizabeth Bowen, Frank O'Connor, Seán O'Faoláin, and Mary Lavin, and in that of their ambivalent heirs, Edna O'Brien, John McGahern, and John Banville; the subversive treatment of sexuality and gender in Northern Irish women's fiction written during and after the Troubles; the often neglected genres of Irish crime fiction, science fiction, and fiction for children; the many-hued novelistic responses to the experiences of famine, revolution, and emigration; and the variety and vibrancy of post-millennial fiction from both parts of Ireland. Readably written and employing a wealth of original research, The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Fiction illuminates a distinguished literary tradition that has altered the shape of world literature.

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9780198889892

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Reviews

In the concluding essay in Liam Harte's Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Fiction, Eve Patten stakes a claim for the Irish novelist placed firmly at the political and cultural vanguard of the changing nation . Given the profound transformations of Irish culture and society over the past few decades, it is a brave claim. And yet, it is more than substantiated by the thirty-five essays that make up this invigorating collection, which brings together many of the leading scholars in the field to chart the continuing importance of Irish fiction, nationally and internationally. * Christopher Morash, Seamus Heaney Professor of Irish Writing, Trinity College Dublin *

"In the concluding essay in Liam Harte's Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Fiction, Eve Patten stakes a claim for the Irish novelist ""placed firmly at the political and cultural vanguard of the changing nation"". Given the profound transformations of Irish culture and society over the past few decades, it is a brave claim. And yet, it is more than substantiated by the thirty-five essays that make up this invigorating collection, which brings together many of the leading scholars in the field to chart the continuing importance of Irish fiction, nationally and internationally. * Christopher Morash, Seamus Heaney Professor of Irish Writing, Trinity College Dublin *"

If you teach modern literature, you will love this book. If you teach Irish literature, you will need it. * Michael Gleason, James Joyce Literary Supplement * In the concluding essay in Liam Harte's Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Fiction, Eve Patten stakes a claim for the Irish novelist placed firmly at the political and cultural vanguard of the changing nation . Given the profound transformations of Irish culture and society over the past few decades, it is a brave claim. And yet, it is more than substantiated by the thirty-five essays that make up this invigorating collection, which brings together many of the leading scholars in the field to chart the continuing importance of Irish fiction, nationally and internationally. * Christopher Morash, Seamus Heaney Professor of Irish Writing, Trinity College Dublin *

"In the concluding essay in Liam Harte's Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Fiction, Eve Patten stakes a claim for the Irish novelist ""placed firmly at the political and cultural vanguard of the changing nation"". Given the profound transformations of Irish culture and society over the past few decades, it is a brave claim. And yet, it is more than substantiated by the thirty-five essays that make up this invigorating collection, which brings together many of the leading scholars in the field to chart the continuing importance of Irish fiction, nationally and internationally. * Christopher Morash, Seamus Heaney Professor of Irish Writing, Trinity College Dublin * Harte's collection succeeds admirably. Gothic, romanticism, the historical novel, magic naturalism, social realism, modernism, hard-boiled noir, children's lit, film, political thrillers, police procedurals, the domestic novel, fiction in Irish, the Bildungsroman, post-modern experimentation - it's all here. If you teach modern literature, you will love this book. If you teach Irish literature, you will need it. * Michael Gleason, James Joyce Literary Supplement *"

Author Information

Liam Harte is Professor of Irish Literature at the University of Manchester. His publications include A History of Irish Autobiography (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Reading the Contemporary Irish Novel 1987-2007 (Wiley Blackwell, 2014), The Literature of the Irish in Britain: Autobiography and Memoir, 1725-2001 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), Modern Irish Autobiography: Self, Nation and Society (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), and Contemporary Irish Fiction: Themes, Tropes, Theories (Macmillan, 2000; co-edited with Michael Parker).

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