Domestic Demons in Irish Fiction

The Dark by John McGahern begins in a similarly fraught and suffocating place as readers are transported "to a claustrophobic world: a small, isolated farmhouse run by a tyrannical widowed father over the subjection of his numberless children." The text was initially banned in Ireland for its obscenity. This edition demonstrates that McGahern's novel of adolescence is not obscene, but revelatory, exposing the corruption underlying authority structures in mid-century Ireland--from the Catholic Church, to the government's willingness to ignore national and communal trauma. The Dark is a story of alarming brutality, surprising tenderness, and poetic lyricism; a reflection of Irish society that maintains historical significance as contemporary Ireland continues to reshape its national identity. This new critical edition includes explanatory footnotes, McGahern's own glossary, and four scholarly essays that guide that readers through the novel's famously controversial history.

Body Politics in Contemporary Irish Fiction, Scheible explores twentieth- and twenty-first century texts that wrestle with the Irish domestic interior as a sexualized and commodified space, this book provides readings of the power and authority of the feminized body in Ireland. Examining works by Elizabeth Bowen, Pamela Hinkson, Emma Donoghue, Tana French, Sally Rooney and James Joyce, this book demonstrates that the definition of Irish nationhood in our contemporary experience of capitalism and biopolitics is dependent on the intertwining and paradoxical tropes of a traditional, yet equally sexual, feminine identity which has been quelled by violence and reproduction.

The panel conversation will feature contributions by Kelly Sullivan (NYU), Claire Bracken (Union), Anna Teekell (Christopher Newport University), and Ellen Scheible (Bridgewater State University). Panelists will discuss how "Domestic Demons" are used in Irish fiction as representations of the interior life of Irish culture, at both structural and familial levels. Literary representations of the Irish domestic interior, particularly after 1922, were and are fraught with depictions of suffocating domestic violence and inescapable tragedy and loss.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Glucksman Ireland House NYU