Writing the Frontier: Anthony Trollope between Britain and Ireland - Softcover

McCourt, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0198806396 ISBN 13: 9780198806394

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2017

Synopsis

Writing the Frontier: Anthony Trollope between Britain and Ireland is the first book-length study of the great Victorian novelist's relationship with Ireland, the country which became his second home and was the location of his first personal and professional success. It offers an in-depth exploration of Trollope's time in Ireland as a rising Post Office official, contextualising his considerable output of Irish novels and short stories and his ongoing interest in the country, its people, and its always complicated relationship with Britain.

Trollope's Irish novels were long neglected but are vital to any understanding of his entire oeuvre and when given their just place alter our overall view of the writer and his take on the world. Uniquely among his fellow English novelists, Trollope consciously occupied a mediating position, believing he knew Ireland better than any other Englishman and better than most Irishmen and used his novels to represent that Ireland to an English public.

Trollope's Irish works constitute a vital and distinct group of works, add significantly to our vision of the writer, change the prevalent view that he is always safe and "English", and represent a rich and underestimated contribution to the canon of the nineteenth century Irish novel tout court, complicating the sometimes arbitrary divisions that are drawn between the English and the Irish traditions.

About this title

About the Author:

John McCourt, Associate Professor of English Literature, Universitą Roma Tre

John McCourt was born and educated in Dublin. He has lived and worked in Italy for over twenty years. He has published widely in the field of Irish Studies, focussing on both nineteenth and twentieth century literature. John is currently an associate Professor of English at Universita Roma Tre. He holds a Ph.D. from the National University of Ireland (University College Dublin) and is a specialist in Joyce Studies and in nineteenth and twentieth century Irish literature. The co-founder of the Trieste Joyce School (1997), he is widely published and best known for The Years of Bloom: Joyce in Trieste 1904-1920, (University of Wisconsin Press/Lilliput Press).

Review:

"John McCourt's Writing the Frontier: Anthony Trollope between Britain and Ireland and Mark Ford's Thomas Hardy: Half a Londoner both achieve genuinely far-reaching new perspectives on their respective authors." --Talia Schaffer, SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1990

"The admirable work that McCourt has done ... provides an elegant rereading of Trollope as a participant observer whose twenty years of living in Ireland provided him with an experience of Irish culture unequalled by other canonical Victorian writers. Two attributes make McCourt's book particularly effective: first, the amazing extent of the author's research into both Trollope and Ireland and second, the care with which he approaches the difficult political issues surrounding Trollope's presentation of Ireland. As is generally true of great Trollope scholars, McCourt displays an encyclopedic knowledge of his subject. ... These discussions remind readers again of the breadth of knowledge McCourt brings to Writing the Frontier, a welcome addition to the canon of Trollope criticism: the first and much needed authoritative book-length study of the author's Irish writings." --Elsie B. Michie, Victorian Studies

"This book is an important contribution to current attempts to theorize and complicate previous dismissals of the nineteenth-century Irish novel. ... McCourt draws on a range of earlier critical work, sustains a dialogue with all previous critics who have looked at Trollope's Irish fiction, maintains a masterly control over every detail of the Irish fiction, and makes a very strong case that this body of work is a considerable, though flawed, achievement on Trollope's part. On the basis of this very insightful and clear-thinking contribution to both Trollope Studies and Irish Studies, perhaps Trollope's contemporary "relevance" will be pursued further." --Jarlath Killeen, Notes and Queries

"It is not the least virtue of McCourt's impeccably researched book that he manages to avoid the temptation of simply holding an ideological Geiger counter up to the works and declaring them radioactive and hence of no literary value. The literary critic in him sees the banality of such sociological reductionism." --Daragh Downes, Studies An Irish Quarterly Review

'His book continues and, perhaps, crowns a historiographical tradition of writing about Trollope and Ireland, of which Owen Dudley Edwards and R.F. Foster are arguably the most important representatives. ... McCourt's significant contribution to Trollope scholarship will thus be a standard in discussions about Trollope and Ireland in the years to come. Perhaps most importantly, it should once and for all force scholars to give Trollope's novels the prominent place in the history of Irish literature that they deserve.' --Frederik Van Dam, Breac: A Digital Journal of Irish Studies

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0198806396
• ISBN 13: 9780198806394
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336