Description
Modern Irish Literature and the Primitive Sublime reveals the primitive sublime as an overlooked aspect of modern Irish literature as central to Ireland窶冱 artistic production and the wider global cultural production of postcolonial literature. A concern for and anxiety about the primitive persists within modern Irish culture. The 窶徙therness窶� within and beyond Ireland窶冱 borders offers writers, from the Celtic Revival through independence and partition to post-9/11, a seductive call through which to negotiate Irish identity. Ultimately, the disquieting awe of the primitive sublime is not simply a momentary recognition of Ireland窶冱 primitive indigenous history but a repeated rhetorical gesture that beckons a transcendent elation brought about by the recognition of the troubled, ritualistic and sacrificial Irish past to reveal a fundamental aspect of the capacity to negotiate identity, viewed through another but intimately reflective of the self, within the long emerging twentieth-century Irish nation.
Table of Contents
Chapter One: Introduction
Chapter Two: Performing the Primitive Sublime: the Celtic Revival and Irish Indigeneity
Chapter Three: James Joyce and the Primitive Sublime: from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to Ulysses and Finnegans Wake
Chapter Four: Mid-century Malaise and Desublimation in Samuel Beckett, Flann O窶傳rien, Kate O窶傳rien, and Edna O窶傳rien
Chapter Five: The Living Dead: the Late Century Resurgence of the Primitive Sublime in works by Seamus Heaney, Eavan Boland, and Brian Friel
Chapter Six: Primitive Sublime Terror: Writing New York after 9/11 in O窶儂eill, McCann, and Tóibín
