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The late 19th and early 20th century was a key period of cultural transition in Ireland. Fiction was used in a plainly partisan or polemical fashion to advance changes in Irish society. Murphy explores the outlook of certain important social classes during this time frame through an assessment of Irish Catholic fiction. This highly original study provides a new context for understanding the works of canonical authors such as Joyce and George Moore by discussing them in light of the now almost forgotten writing from which they emerged-the several hundred novels that were written during the period, many of them by women writers.
List of contents
Introduction
Upper-Middle-Class Fiction, 1873-1890The Search for Respectability
Victorian Virtues
Social Conflict and Economic Reality
Versions of Catholicism
Transition, 1890-1900
Intelligentsia Fiction, 1900-1922Catholic Ireland and Kickham's Knocknagow
Opportunities for Changing Society
Portrait of Catholic Ireland
Sources of Renewal
Guinan and Sheehan
New Irelands
Metaphors of Identity
Discourse and Defeat
Bibliography
Index
About the author
JAMES H. MURPHY is Lecturer in English at All Hallows College, Dublin. He is editor of
No Bland Facility (1991),
New Beginnings in Ministry (1992) and
Nos Autem: Castleknock College and Its Contribution (1996) and coeditor of
Separate Spheres? Gender and Nineteenth-Century Ireland (forthcoming, 1997).
