Mark Quigley
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780823245444
- eISBN:
- 9780823252565
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823245444.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
Though Irish contributions to literary modernism are well known, Irish modernism tends to be framed through narrow treatments of Joyce, Yeats, and the Revival as “cosmopolitan” writers detached from ...
More
Though Irish contributions to literary modernism are well known, Irish modernism tends to be framed through narrow treatments of Joyce, Yeats, and the Revival as “cosmopolitan” writers detached from a wider Irish intellectual and cultural history and a consideration of Irish literature’s role in modernism’s ongoing development. Empire’s Wake significantly broadens conventional understandings of Irish modernism and postmodernism by tracing how a distinctly postcolonial late modernism emerges within Irish literature between the late 1920s and the 1950s to contest and extend key aspects of modernist thought and aesthetic innovation at the very moment that high modernism is consolidating its influence and prestige. Countering critical portraits of the era as one of aesthetic stagnation, the book argues that a late modernist sensibility animates postcolonial Irish writing across a range of literary registers running from the Gaelic autobiographies of the remote Blasket Islands to Samuel Beckett’s radical re-imaginings of the modern novel. Continuing, then, to resituate Irish modernism and postmodernism within the contexts of the lively political, intellectual, and cultural debates marking Irish postcoloniality’s distinct phases from the 1920s to the 1990s “Celtic Tiger” era, the book draws on the work of Samuel Beckett, Sean O’Faoláin, Frank McCourt and the Blasket autobiographers to complicate and enhance our assessments of the legacies of Joyce and the Revival and challenge conventional notions of a singular “global modernism” emerging in the aftermath of empire.Less
Though Irish contributions to literary modernism are well known, Irish modernism tends to be framed through narrow treatments of Joyce, Yeats, and the Revival as “cosmopolitan” writers detached from a wider Irish intellectual and cultural history and a consideration of Irish literature’s role in modernism’s ongoing development. Empire’s Wake significantly broadens conventional understandings of Irish modernism and postmodernism by tracing how a distinctly postcolonial late modernism emerges within Irish literature between the late 1920s and the 1950s to contest and extend key aspects of modernist thought and aesthetic innovation at the very moment that high modernism is consolidating its influence and prestige. Countering critical portraits of the era as one of aesthetic stagnation, the book argues that a late modernist sensibility animates postcolonial Irish writing across a range of literary registers running from the Gaelic autobiographies of the remote Blasket Islands to Samuel Beckett’s radical re-imaginings of the modern novel. Continuing, then, to resituate Irish modernism and postmodernism within the contexts of the lively political, intellectual, and cultural debates marking Irish postcoloniality’s distinct phases from the 1920s to the 1990s “Celtic Tiger” era, the book draws on the work of Samuel Beckett, Sean O’Faoláin, Frank McCourt and the Blasket autobiographers to complicate and enhance our assessments of the legacies of Joyce and the Revival and challenge conventional notions of a singular “global modernism” emerging in the aftermath of empire.
Mark Quigley
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780823245444
- eISBN:
- 9780823252565
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823245444.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter argues that an overemphasis on cosmopolitanism as the signature feature of modernism significantly distorts understandings of the development of modernist aesthetics, especially in ...
More
This chapter argues that an overemphasis on cosmopolitanism as the signature feature of modernism significantly distorts understandings of the development of modernist aesthetics, especially in postcolonial contexts. Arguing that Irish writers’ late modernism implodes the anthropological object anchoring the primitivism of high modernist thought, the chapter discusses the conceptions of “anthropological modernism” offered by Gregory Castle, Jed Esty, and Marc Manganaro and explains how considerations of Irish late modernism shed new light on the projects of “the new modernist studies” and analyses of “global” modernism. Tracing the different ways that scholars as varied as Richard Ellmann, Terry Eagleton, Robert Crawford, and Rebecca Walkowitz have framed the relationship between modernism and cosmopolitanism through the work of Irish writers such as Joyce and Yeats, the chapter also explores how a sustained engagement with Irish studies, postcolonial studies and recent developments in Beckett scholarship helps to produce a more richly nuanced account of modernism’s different moments and the ways that postcoloniality shapes the transition to a distinct set of late modernist aesthetic practices and the subsequent rise of postmodernism.Less
This chapter argues that an overemphasis on cosmopolitanism as the signature feature of modernism significantly distorts understandings of the development of modernist aesthetics, especially in postcolonial contexts. Arguing that Irish writers’ late modernism implodes the anthropological object anchoring the primitivism of high modernist thought, the chapter discusses the conceptions of “anthropological modernism” offered by Gregory Castle, Jed Esty, and Marc Manganaro and explains how considerations of Irish late modernism shed new light on the projects of “the new modernist studies” and analyses of “global” modernism. Tracing the different ways that scholars as varied as Richard Ellmann, Terry Eagleton, Robert Crawford, and Rebecca Walkowitz have framed the relationship between modernism and cosmopolitanism through the work of Irish writers such as Joyce and Yeats, the chapter also explores how a sustained engagement with Irish studies, postcolonial studies and recent developments in Beckett scholarship helps to produce a more richly nuanced account of modernism’s different moments and the ways that postcoloniality shapes the transition to a distinct set of late modernist aesthetic practices and the subsequent rise of postmodernism.
Mark Quigley
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780823245444
- eISBN:
- 9780823252565
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823245444.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter considers the treatment of primitivism and a radical incommensurability portrayed by Joyce in Portrait of the Artist and Stephen Hero as a means of reflecting on the legacy of Irish late ...
More
This chapter considers the treatment of primitivism and a radical incommensurability portrayed by Joyce in Portrait of the Artist and Stephen Hero as a means of reflecting on the legacy of Irish late modernist aesthetics and the ways its interrogations of modernist subjectivity and cosmopolitanism are themselves seeded by Joyce in anticipation of the modernist interventions of both the Blasket writers and Samuel Beckett. The chapter proposes that a reconsideration of Joyce’s relationship to postcoloniality and to the generation of Irish writers that follow him opens a series of new possibilities for modernist studies especially as it grapples with the spaces and concerns of so-called global modernism.Less
This chapter considers the treatment of primitivism and a radical incommensurability portrayed by Joyce in Portrait of the Artist and Stephen Hero as a means of reflecting on the legacy of Irish late modernist aesthetics and the ways its interrogations of modernist subjectivity and cosmopolitanism are themselves seeded by Joyce in anticipation of the modernist interventions of both the Blasket writers and Samuel Beckett. The chapter proposes that a reconsideration of Joyce’s relationship to postcoloniality and to the generation of Irish writers that follow him opens a series of new possibilities for modernist studies especially as it grapples with the spaces and concerns of so-called global modernism.
