Modern Irish Literature and the Primitive Sublime

Maria McGarrity

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9781032285566
• eBook ISBN: 9781003857617
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Crítica literaria inglesa

Modern Irish Literature and the Primitive Sublime reveals the primitive sublime as an overlooked aspect of modern Irish literature as central to Ireland's 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 "otherness" within and beyond Ireland's 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's 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

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction: Modern Ireland and the Primitive Sublime
• 2 Performing the Primitive Sublime: The Celtic Revival and Irish Indigeneity
• 3 James Joyce and the Primitive Sublime: From A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to Ulysses and Finnegans Wake
• 4 Mid-century Malaise and Desublimation in Samuel Beckett, Flann O’Brien, Kate O’Brien, and Edna O’Brien
• 5 The Living Dead: The Late Century Resurgence of the Primitive Sublime in Works by Seamus Heaney, Eavan Boland, and Brian Friel
• 6 Primitive Sublime Terror: Writing New York after 9/11 in Joseph O’Neill, Colum McCann, and Colm Tóibín
• Index