Haunted Historiographies: The Rhetoric of Ideology in Postcolonial Irish Fiction

Matthew Schultz

ISBN 10: 071909092X / ISBN 13: 9780719090929

Published by Manchester University Press, 2014

About this Item

Matthew Schultz maps rhetorical hauntings across a wide range of postcolonial Irish novels, and defines the spectre as a non-present presence that simultaneously symbolises and analyses an overlapping of Irish myth and Irish history. Num Pages: 216 pages. BIC Classification: DS. Category: (P) Professional & Vocational. Dimension: 144 x 218 x 22. Weight in Grams: 388.

Seller Inventory # 9780719090929

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Haunted Historiographies: The Rhetoric of Ideology in Postcolonial Irish Fiction
• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Publication Date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 071909092X
• ISBN 13: 9780719090929
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

The spectres of history haunt Irish fiction. In this compelling study, Matthew Schultz maps these rhetorical hauntings across a wide range of postcolonial Irish novels, and defines the spectre as a non-present presence that simultaneously symbolises and analyses an overlapping of Irish myth and Irish history.

By exploring this exchange between literary discourse and historical events, Haunted historiographies provides literary historians and cultural critics with a theory of the spectre that exposes the various complex ways in which novelists remember, represent and reinvent historical narrative. It juxtaposes canonical and non-canonical novels that complicate long-held assumptions about four definitive events in modern Irish history – the Great Famine, the Irish Revolution, the Second World War and the Northern Irish Troubles – to demonstrate how historiographical Irish fiction from James Joyce and Samuel Beckett to Roddy Doyle and Sebastian Barry is both a product of Ireland’s colonial history and also the rhetorical means by which a post-colonial culture has emerged.

About the Author

Matthew Schultz is a literary scholar and novelist. A native Clevelander, he earned his B.A. (2003) and M.A. (2005) at John Caroll University, and his his Ph.D. in English Literature at Saint Louis University (2010), with areas of emphasis in modernism and Irish Studies. He teaches English and directs the Writing Center at Vassar College.

Matthew's teaching highlights the ways in which developments in modern literature emerge from their immediate cultural contexts, and also how literary texts look beyond their present moment and medium, revising models inherited from the past and anticipating future forms of literary expression.