Dissolute Characters: Irish literary history through Balzac, Sheridan Le Fanu, Yeats and Bowen - Softcover

McCormack, Bill

 
9780719085635: Dissolute Characters: Irish literary history through Balzac, Sheridan Le Fanu, Yeats and Bowen
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0719085632 ISBN 13: 9780719085635
Publisher: Manchester University Press, 2011

Synopsis

Irish literature in English commands world-wide respect, but it is rarely discussed in a comparative light. This study of the making and unmaking of character commences with Balzac's impact on nineteenth-century Irish fiction. Sheridan Le Fanu links Balzac and Swedenborg to Yeats, and anticipates Elizabeth Bowen's deployment of ghost story conventions in the 1940s. Through painterly imagery, biblical quotation and the distortion of proper names, Le Fanu shows character to be a self-consuming project. Yeats's Parnell emerges as a modernist gothic hero of the 1930s. Bowen's The heat of the day anatomises the problems of identity, bequeathed by Yeats. Radically revising the idea of a gothic tradition and traversing two centuries of Irish literary history, Dissolute characters gives a fluent and detailed account of the emerging relation between Irish culture, modernism and politics.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author

W. J. Mc Cormack is Keeper of the Edward Worth Library, Dublin. -- .

From the Back Cover

Irish literature in English commands world-wide respect, but it is rarely discussed in a comparative light. This study of the making and unmaking of character commences with Balzac's impact on nineteenth-century Irish fiction. Sheridan Le Fanu links Balzac and Swedenborg to Yeats, and anticipates Elizabeth Bowen's deployment of ghost story conventions in the 1940s.

Through painterly imagery, biblical quotation and the distortion of proper names, Le Fanu shows character to be a self-consuming project. Yeats's Parnell emerges as a modernist gothic hero of the 1930s. Bowen's The heat of the day anatomises the problems of identity, bequeathed by Yeats.

Radically revising the idea of a gothic tradition and traversing two centuries of Irish literary history, Dissolute characters gives a fluent and detailed account of the emerging relation between Irish culture, modernism and politics.

From the Inside Flap

Irish literature in English commands world-wide respect, but it is rarely discussed in a comparative light. This study of the making and unmaking of character commences with Balzac's impact on nineteenth-century Irish fiction. Sheridan Le Fanu links Balzac and Swedenborg to Yeats, and anticipates Elizabeth Bowen's deployment of ghost story conventions in the 1940s.Through painterly imagery, biblical quotation and the distortion of proper names, Le Fanu shows character to be a self-consuming project. Yeats's Parnell emerges as a modernist gothic hero of the 1930s. Bowen's The heat of the day anatomises the problems of identity, bequeathed by Yeats.Radically revising the idea of a gothic tradition and traversing two centuries of Irish literary history, Dissolute characters gives a fluent and detailed account of the emerging relation between Irish culture, modernism and politics.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

Publisher
Manchester University Press
Publication date
2011
Language
English
ISBN 10 
0719085632
ISBN 13 
9780719085635
Binding
Paperback
Number of pages
265

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780719039621: Dissolute Characters: Irish Literary History Through Balzac, Sheridan Le Fanu, Yeats and Bowen

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  0719039622 ISBN 13:  9780719039621
Publisher: Manchester University Press, 1993
Hardcover