Anglo-Irish: The Literary Imagination in a Hyphenated Culture (Princeton Legacy Library) - Softcover

Moynahan, Julian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0691604495 ISBN 13: 9780691604497

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2017

Synopsis

In their day, the Anglo-Irish were the ascendant minority--Protestant, loyalist, privileged landholders in a recumbent, rural, and Catholic land. Their world is vanished, but shades of the Anglo-Irish linger in the big-house estates of Ireland and in the imaginative writings of this realm. In this first comprehensive study of their literature, Julian Moynahan rediscovers the unity of their greatest writings, from Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent through Yeats's poetry to Bowen's The Last September and Samuel Beckett's Watt. Throughout he challenges postcolonial assumptions, arguing that the Anglo-Irish since 1800 were indelibly Irish, not mere colonial servants of Imperial Britain. Moynahan begins in 1800 with the Act of Union, when the Anglo-Irish become Irish. Just as the fortunes of this community begin to wane, its literary power unfolds. The Anglo-Irish produce a haunting, memorable body of writings that explore a unique yet always Irish identity and destiny. Moynahan's exploration of the literature reveals women writers--Maria Edgeworth, Edith Somerville, Martin Ross, and Elizabeth Bowen--as a generative and major force in the development of this literary imagination. Along the way, he attends closely to the Gothic and to the mystery writing of C. R. Maturin and J. S. Le Fanu, and provides in-depth revaluations of William Carleton and Charles Lever.

Originally published in 1995.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

About this title

From the Back Cover

"Viewing this group of writers as a whole offers fresh insights into well-known major writers as well as giving new insights into others. This book will appeal to all readers interested in the English novel, in Irish writers, great and small, and to students of nineteenth-century literature."--Joseph Frank, Stanford University

About the Author

Julian Moynahan is Emeritus Professor of English at Rutgers University.

Edition details

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0691604495
• ISBN 13: 9780691604497
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 302