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The Leaving of Ireland brings together an international group of scholars to reflect critically on the unfolding nature of the experience of Irish cultural identity at a time when Ireland is struggling to adjust to the shattering impacts of globalization and religious scandals of recent decades. Looking back over the last two centuries, the volume considers a range of literary and filmic works that have sought to articulate something of this experience and its multiple locations. The essays revisit crucial constituents of Irish history and self-perception at the micro-level, exploring the representation of individual experiences of migration and identification and the definition of a sense of belonging. They also examine these issues at the macro-level, looking at larger politico-historical transformations, national affiliations and changed social and geographical landscapes. The book is organized around key themes including history, mobility, memory and place and addresses the works of a wide range of authors, including Emily Lawless, Frank McCourt, Sinéad Morrissey, Paul Muldoon, Joseph O'Connor, J.M. Synge and W.B. Yeats.
List of contents
Contents: Heidi Hansson: Roads to Nowhere: The Famine as Place in Emily Lawless's Writing - Katherina Dodou: Joseph O'Connor's Star of the Sea and the Travelling Memory of the Great Irish Famine - Malin Lidström Brock: Philomena and Ireland's Mother-and-Baby Homes - Mats Tegmark: The Price of the Prize: The Construction of «Irish» and «American» Subject Positions in Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes - John Lynch: Religion, Migration and Church Abuse Scandals in the Media: Testimonies of Two Irish Religious Sisters - Michaela Schrage-Früh: Foreigners Within: Identity, Belonging and the Migrant Other in Barry McCrea's The First Verse and Sean O'Reilly's The Swing of Things - Robert Brazeau: Mobility, Sexuality and the Cult of Domesticity in J. M. Synge - Eóin Flannery: Embracing the 'Other': Colum McCann's Zoli (2006) - Hedda Friberg-Harnesk: On the Shifting Sands of Affinity: «Identity Migration» and Ideology in Liam O'Flaherty's Autobiographies - Britta Olinder: Migration and Belonging in Deirdre Madden's Novels - Anne Karhio: «Blurt it out like a Polaroid»: Framing Place in the Poetry of Paul Muldoon/Sinéad Morrissey - Ruben Moi: The Importance of Elsewheres and Cities in Paul Muldoon's Poetry - Eugene O'Brien: 'The Golden Calf ': Irish Crime and the Deconstruction of Irish Society - Charles I. Armstrong: An «Experiment in Living»: Bohemianism and Homelessness in W. B. Yeats's Autobiographies.
About the author
John Lynch is Senior Lecturer in Film and Media Studies at Karlstad University, Sweden. He has published widely on the politics of representation in film and media culture and is co-author of After Bloody Sunday: Representation, Ethics and Justice (2007).
Katherina Dodou is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Dalarna University, Sweden. Her publications focus on contemporary fiction and the understanding of the novel as social discourse. In 2014, she co-edited a special issue of the journal Nordic Irish Studies on cultural memory and the remediation of narratives of Irishness.
