Modern Irish-American Fiction

Modern Irish-American Fiction
Title Modern Irish-American Fiction PDF eBook
Author Daniel J. Casey
Publisher Syracuse University Press
Pages 294
Release 1989-07-01
Genre Literary Collections
ISBN 9780815602347

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Reflected in these writings from twenty-one Irish Americans are the themes common to all immigrant literature, but from the authors’ own ethnic point of view. The struggle for success forms the underlying structure in the stories by O’Hara, Curran, and McCarthy; and the changing values the New World imposes on the individual are seen in Edwin O’Connor’s Grand Day for Mr. Garvey. Irish wit and black humor pepper all the stories, as represented by Dunn’s bartender-philosopher, Dooley, and Donleavy’s Fairy Tale of New York. Catholicism is omnipresent and is often characterized by the priest, as in Fitzgerald’s Benediction, Power’s Bill, and Flaherty’s Fogarty. Themes that have an immense effect on the characters’ relationships are their difficulties in communicating with one another, which Gill captures succinctly in The Cemetery, and the repositioning of gender roles, so evident in Cullinan’s Life After Death and in Costello’s Murphy’s Xmas. Finally, there are the intense, often contradictory, feelings the characters have toward their “homeland:” Hamill’s Gift illustrates the desire to rid Ireland of British rule; Gordon’s “neighborhood” shows the immigrants’ embarrassment over their origins. Editors Casey and Rhodes have organized these pieces chronologically, beginning at the turn of the century. Thus, the selections illustrate the progression of Irish-American literature and also fulfill the word of William Kennedy, who said of his own writing: “those who came before helped to show me how to turn experience into literature.”

Too Smart to be Sentimental

Too Smart to be Sentimental
Title Too Smart to be Sentimental PDF eBook
Author Sally Barr Ebest
Publisher
Pages 276
Release 2008
Genre Biography & Autobiography
ISBN

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Through a series of critical and biographical essays, this work offers a feminist literary history of twentieth-century Irish America.

Irish American Fiction from World War II to JFK

Irish American Fiction from World War II to JFK
Title Irish American Fiction from World War II to JFK PDF eBook
Author Beth O’Leary Anish
Publisher Springer Nature
Pages 214
Release 2021-11-02
Genre Literary Criticism
ISBN 3030831949

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Irish American Fiction from World War II to JFK addresses the concerns of Irish America in the post-war era by studying its fiction and the authors who brought the communities of their youth to life on the page. With few exceptions, the novels studied here are lesser-known works, with little written about them to date. Mining these tremendous resources for the details of Irish American life, this book looks back to the beginning of the twentieth century, when the authors' immigrant grandparents were central to their communities. It also points forward to the twenty-first century, as the concerns these authors had for the future of Irish America have become a legacy we must grapple with in the present.

The Construction of Irish Identity in American Literature

The Construction of Irish Identity in American Literature
Title The Construction of Irish Identity in American Literature PDF eBook
Author Christopher Dowd
Publisher Routledge
Pages 465
Release 2010-09-13
Genre Literary Criticism
ISBN 1136902406

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This book examines the development of literary constructions of Irish-American identity from the mid-nineteenth century arrival of the Famine generation through the Great Depression. It goes beyond an analysis of negative Irish stereotypes and shows how Irish characters became the site of intense cultural debate regarding American identity, with some writers imagining Irishness to be the antithesis of Americanness, but others suggesting Irishness to be a path to Americanization. This study emphasizes the importance of considering how a sense of Irishness was imagined by both Irish-American writers conscious of the process of self-definition as well as non-Irish writers responsive to shifting cultural concerns regarding ethnic others. It analyzes specific iconic Irish-American characters including Mark Twain’s Huck Finn and Margaret Mitchell’s Scarlet O’Hara, as well as lesser-known Irish monsters who lurked in the American imagination such as T.S. Eliot’s Sweeney and Frank Norris’ McTeague. As Dowd argues, in contemporary American society, Irishness has been largely absorbed into a homogenous white culture, and as a result, it has become a largely invisible ethnicity to many modern literary critics. Too often, they simply do not see Irishness or do not think it relevant, and as a result, many Irish-American characters have been de-ethnicized in the critical literature of the past century. This volume reestablishes the importance of Irish ethnicity to many characters that have come to be misread as generically white and shows how Irishness is integral to their stories.

Charming Billy

Charming Billy
Title Charming Billy PDF eBook
Author Alice McDermott
Publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Pages 261
Release 2009-11-24
Genre Fiction
ISBN 1429929707

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Charming Billy is the winner of the 1998 National Book Award for Fiction. Alice McDermott's striking novel, Charming Billy, is a study of the lies that bind and the weight of familial love, of the way good intentions can be as destructive as the truth they were meant to hide. Billy Lynch's family and friends have gathered to comfort his widow, and to pay their respects to one of the last great romantics. As they trade tales of his famous humor, immense charm, and consuming sorrow, a complex portrait emerges of an enigmatic man, a loyal friend, a beloved husband, an incurable alcoholic.

Contemporary Irish Republican Prison Writing

Contemporary Irish Republican Prison Writing
Title Contemporary Irish Republican Prison Writing PDF eBook
Author L. Whalen
Publisher Springer
Pages 254
Release 2007-11-26
Genre Political Science
ISBN 0230610064

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As it traces the textual history of the works of authors like Bobby Sands and Gerry Adams, this book analyses Republican resistance to disciplinary structures, demonstrating the ways in which prisoners appropriate space through discursive strategies.

Making the Irish American

Making the Irish American
Title Making the Irish American PDF eBook
Author J.J. Lee
Publisher NYU Press
Pages 751
Release 2007-03
Genre History
ISBN 0814752187

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Explores the history of the Irish in America, offering an overview of Irish history, immigration to the United States, and the transition of the Irish from the working class to all levels of society.