ENGL 7732 Contemporary Irish Fiction

Mary Robinson, in her inaugural speech in 1990, hoped that her presidency of Ireland would "promote the telling of stories, stories of celebration through the arts and stories of conscience and of social justice." Concentrating on contemporary fiction, this course examines the confluence of "stories" representing Irish society since the late-1980s. We will consider the (re)-emergence in the 1990s of the novel as Ireland's dominant cultural form and question what that means in terms of cultural aesthetics. We will examine how the texts represent significant cultural shifts and attempt answers to ongoing cultural questions including: the relationship between tradition and innovation; national identity in an era of globalization; the uses of memory, history, and the past; representations of trauma and survival; economic boom, bust and austerity; the "family cell" and eroding shame; girlhood/toxic masculinity; and gender, sexuality, ethnicity and race in the "new Ireland." Authors include Roddy Doyle, Seamus Deane, Eilis Ní Dhuibhne (Burns Visiting Scholar, F'20), Colum McCann, Colm Tóibín, Anne Enright, Emma Donoghue, Sebastian Barry, Kevin Barry, Eimear McBride, Donal Ryan, Sara Baume, Lisa McInerney, Mike McCormack, Anna Burns, Sally Rooney, and Claire Kilroy.