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Edna O'Brien and the Art of Fiction
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2022
About this book
Since the appearance of her first novel, The Country Girls, in 1960—a book that undermined the nation’s ideal of innocent and pious Irish girlhood—Edna O’Brien has provoked controversy in her native Ireland and abroad. Indeed, several of her early novels were condemned by church authorities and banned by the Irish government for their frank portrayals of sexual matters and the inner lives of women. Now an internationally acclaimed writer, O’Brien must be critically reassessed for a twenty-first century audience. Edna O’Brien and the Art of Fiction provides an urgent retrospective consideration of one of the English-speaking world’s best-selling and most prolific contemporary authors. Drawing on O’Brien’s fiction as well as archival material, and applying new theoretical approaches—including ecocritical and feminist new materialist readings—this study considers the pioneering and enduring ways O’Brien represents women’s experience, family relationships, the natural world, sex, creativity, and death, and her work’s long anticipation of contemporary movements such as #metoo.
Author / Editor information
MAUREEN O'CONNOR lectures in English at University College Cork in Cork, Ireland. She is the author of The Female and the Species: The Animal in Irish Women’s Writing and co-editor of Edna O’Brien: New Critical Perspectives, Wild Colonial Girl: Essays on Edna O’Brien, and Ireland and India: Colonies, Culture, and Empire.
Reviews
“O’Connor’s close readings, coupled with a deft use of theory, nimbly move between texts in O’Brien’s oeuvre, highlighting recurring images and preoccupations, resulting in a valuable critical account that firmly illustrates O’Brien’s mastery as a writer; and asserts her as a figure in Irish literary culture deserving of continued attention.”— Irish University Review
“Maureen O’Connor nails once and (one hopes) for all the myth of Edna O’Brien as wailing Irish banshee. Instead O’Connor makes a scholarly and at the same time impassioned case for O’Brien as a serious, creative artist thoroughly cognizant of what she is about and decades ahead of her fellow Irish in her analysis of political, social, and environmental ills.”
— Heather Ingman, author of Irish Women's Fiction: From Edgeworth to Enright“We are only beginning to understand O’Brien’s impact on the fields of women’s writing, Irish literature, contemporary writing, and feminist postcolonial studies. Edna O’Brien and the Art of Fiction is a landmark book—a turning point—for future conversations.”— Tara Harney-Mahajan, James Joyce Literary Supplement
"Readable yet theoretically sophisticated, this welcome new study offers an authoritative look at one of Ireland’s greatest—and historically most underappreciated—writers. O’Connor ranges comprehensively through O’Brien’s canon to trace her career-long feminist critique of Irish society's patriarchal mores. Both a history of O’Brien criticism and an examination of her work, O’Connor’s exciting study offers a forceful defense of O’Brien’s craft and an unapologetic critique of the social forces hampering the reception and interpretation of her canon. This study is destined to become required reading in O’Brien studies."
— Kathleen Costello-Sullivan, author of Trauma and Recovery in the Twenty-First-Century Irish Novel"In this meticulous, forensic, and illuminating work of scholarship, Dr. O'Connor sets the benchmark for all future studies of one of Ireland's greatest writers. In what amounts to a powerful work of restorative justice, she establishes once and for all the high and deliberate guiding intelligence that animates O'Brien's work."
— Theo Dorgan, author of Orpheus"This is a scholarly, sensitive, balanced exploration of the work of a great writer. It is beautifully written and very accessible. Maureen O’Connor has left no stone unturned in her painstaking research and the result is a wonderful book, indispensable for anyone with an interest in Edna O’Brien or contemporary Irish literature. Thank you, Maureen O’Connor!"
— Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, author of Little Red and Other StoriesTopics
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Frontmatter
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CONTENTS
vii -
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Preface and Acknowledgments
ix -
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Introduction: Edna O’Brien, Leader of the Banned
1 -
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1 Anti-Oedipal Desires
18 -
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2 The Liberating Sadomasochism of Things
35 -
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3 The Ungrammatical Sublime
51 -
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4 Otherworldly Possessions
68 -
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5 Myth and Mutation
83 -
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6 Disorder, Dirt, and Death
98 -
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Notes
115 -
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Bibliography
145 -
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Index
157
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
December 6, 2021
eBook ISBN:
9781684483396
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook ISBN:
9781684483396
Keywords for this book
Edna O'Brien; Irish women’s writing; Ecofeminism; gender studies; women's studies; contemporary fiction; death; sex; family; The Country Girls; #MeToo; #metoo movement; feminist; Ireland; Country Girl; Time and Tide; Wild Decembers; House of Splendid Isolation
Audience(s) for this book
For universities and colleges of further and higher education
