Best Are Leaving - Emigration and Post-War Irish Culture

A study of representations of Irish emigrant culture and Irish immigrants in Britain.

List of contents

1. The best are leaving: fitness, marriage, and the crisis of the national family; 2. Pink witch: women, modernity, and urbanisation; 3. British paddies: realism and the Irish immigrant; 4. The vanishing Irish: assimilation, ethnicisation, and literary caricature; 5. Clay is the flesh: looking at manual labour.

About the author

Clair Wills is Professor of Irish Literature at Queen Mary, University of London. Previous publications include That Neutral Island: A History of Ireland during the Second World War (2007) and Dublin 1916: The Siege of the GPO (2009).

Summary

Clair Wills's The Best Are Leaving is an important and wide-ranging study of representations of Irish emigrant culture and of Irish immigrants in Britain in post-war Europe. It analyses stereotypes of the Irish across a range of discourses, including official documents; sociological texts; documentary fiction and memoir; and Irish realist fiction, drama, and film.

Product details

• Authors: Clair Wills, Clair (Queen Mary University of London) Wills, Wills Clair
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 02.02.2015
• EAN: 9781107680876
• ISBN: 978-1-107-68087-6
• No. of pages: 220
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies; Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > General, dictionaries; Cultural Studies, English, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Emigration & Immigration, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, Ireland, 21st century, c 2000 to c 2100, Literature: history & criticism, Later 20th century c 1950 to c 1999, Migration, immigration and emigration, Literary studies: from c 2000, Relating to migrant groups / diaspora communities or peoples