Representations of Loss in Irish Literature

Description

This is the first book on Irish literature to focus on the theme of loss, and how it is represented in Irish writing. It focuses on how literature is ideally suited to expressions and understanding of the nature of loss, given its ability to access and express emotions, sensations, feelings, and the visceral and haptic areas of experience. Dealing with feelings and with sensations, poems, novels and drama can allow for cathartic expressions of these emotions, as well as for a fuller understanding of what is involved in loss across all situations. The main notion of loss being dealt with is that of death, but feelings of loss in the wake of immigration and of the loss of certainties that defined notions of identity are also analysed. This volume will be of interest to scholars, students and researchers in Irish Studies, loss, memory, trauma, death, and cultural studies. Front Matter ....Pages i-xiii Introduction: Defining Representations of Loss (Deirdre Flynn, Eugene O’Brien)....Pages 1-17 Front Matter ....Pages 19-19 In Search of Lost History: Embodied Memory and the Material Past in Post-millennial Irish Fiction (Maria Beville)....Pages 21-36 Holding on to ‘Rites, Rhythms and Rituals’: Mike McCormack’s Homage to Small Town Irish Life and Death (Deirdre Flynn)....Pages 37-52 Evental Time and the Untime in Finnegans Wake (Shahriyar Mansouri)....Pages 53-73 ‘All Over Belfast’: History, Loss, and Potential in Lucy Caldwell’s Where They Were Missed (Dawn Miranda Sherratt-Bado)....Pages 75-93 Front Matter ....Pages 95-95 ‘A Pure Change Happened’: Seamus Heaney and the Poetry of Loss (Eugene O’Brien)....Pages 97-114 Lost? Technology and Place in Recent Irish Poetry (Anne Karhio)....Pages 115-132 Resisting Profit and Loss in Contemporary Irish EcoPoetry (Eóin Flannery)....Pages 133-154 Grief, Guilt, and Ghosts: Fantastic Strategies of Staging Loss on the Contemporary Irish Stage (Eva-Maria Kubin)....Pages 155-173 ‘The Wake? What of It?’: Figures of Loss in the Migrant Plays of Colm Ó Clubhán (Ed Madden)....Pages 175-195 Back Matter ....Pages 197-205