Addressed to both literary scholars and the general reader, Understanding Anne Enright is an introduction to the novels and stories of one of the most original and engaging contemporary Irish writers. It analyses developments in Enright’s writing, comparing the evolution of themes and forms from one book to another, contextualising her fiction, and interrogating the impact of concepts such as postmodernism, post-feminism and post-nationalism on the writing and reading of her work. It particularly follows the evolution of Enright’s treatment of the corporeality of women’s experiences and its correlation with the embodied language of her fiction. Thus, this book shows how Enright’s writing participates in the latest thematic and formal trends not only of Irish or British, but also of Western, literature.

Following the structure of other titles in the Continuum Introductions to Literary Genres series, Irish Fiction includes: A broad definition of the genre and its essential elements. A timeline of developments within the genre. Critical concerns to bear in mind while reading in the genre. Detailed readings of a range of widely taught texts. In-depth analysis of major themes and issues. Signposts for further study within the genre. A summary of the most important criticism in the field. A glossary of terms. An annotated, critical reading list. This book offers students, writers, and serious fans a window into some of the most popular topics, styles and periods in this subject. Authors studied in Irish Fiction include: Maria Edgeworth, Sydney Owenson, John and Michael Banim, Gerald Griffin, William Carleton, Charles Lever, Sheridan Le Fanu, Edith Somerville, Violet Martin, George Moore, James Stephens, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Flann O'Brien, Sean O'Faolain, Frank O'Connor, Liam O'Flaherty, Kate O'Brien, Elizabeth Bowen, Francis Stuart, Brian Moore, William Trevor, Edna O'Brien, Jennifer Johnston, Roddy Doyle, John McGahern, John Banville, Eoin McNamee, Colm Toibin, Anne Enright and Emma Donoghue>

"[Hewett] provides generously varied approaches to living with the death of a loved one, reflecting her belief that grief is a process that connects body, mind and spirit. . . . The book is designed to provide an array of constructive, creative ways for mourners to spend their time as they move toward adjustment and reconciliation. . . . [R]eaders may select the ones most compatible with their own beliefs and lifestyles." --Kirkus Indie Review When grief hits, we hurt. What can we do about the pain of grief? Dr. Hewett explains that grief and mourning are not the same thing--grief is passive (it happens to us) and mourning is active (we do something with the grief). More Good Words: Practical Activities for Mourning teaches that grief is deeply related to love. It encompasses a broad spectrum of emotions as a reaction to a loss like death. Mourning occurs through a wide range of actions that we can take to work with that grief. Viewing grief as a hopeful journey rather than an obstacle, this book uses five realms of experience--emotional, spiritual, physical, cognitive, and social--to provide concrete mourning activities that address grief and lead to hope for healing. These activities are ones that readers can do as provided or adapt to fit their own unique circumstances and grief. The book ends with a discussion of practical ways to connect with our dying family members and friends, as well as specific actions we can take to help our families mourn when we eventually die. More Good Words looks honestly at grief and mourning in North America and offers hope for walking that necessary journey.

This book offers insight into the ways students enrolled in European classrooms in higher education come to understand American experience through its literary fiction, which for decades has been a key component of English department offerings and American Studies curricula across the continent and in Great Britain and Ireland. The essays provide an understanding of how post-World War II American writers, some already elevated to ‘canonical status’ and some not, are represented in European university classrooms and why they have been chosen for inclusion in coursework. The book will be of interest to scholars and teachers of American literature and American studies, and to students in American literature and American studies courses.

English sheds new light on death and dying in twentieth- and twenty-first century Irish literature as she examines the ways that Irish wake and funeral rituals shape novelistic discourse. She argues that the treatment of death in Irish novels offers a way of making sense of mortality and provides insight into Ireland’s cultural and historical experience of death. Combining key concepts from narrative theory—such as readers’ competing desires for a story and for closure—with Irish cultural analyses and literary criticism, English performs astute close readings of death in select novels by Joyce, Beckett, Kate O’Brien, John McGahern, and Anne Enright. With each chapter, she demonstrates how novelistic narrative serves as a way of mediating between the physical facts of death and its lasting impact on the living. English suggests that while Catholic conceptions of death have always been challenged by alternative secular value systems, these systems have also struggled to find meaningful alternatives to the consolation offered by religious conceptions of the afterlife.

The words fear, risk and safety have come to define our contemporary age and have been construed as a dynamic background in the human sciences against which most risk narratives, imaginative or otherwise, can be read. This volume brings together original articles to investigate “cultures of fear” in post-millennial works and covers a wide variety of topics ranging from post-millennial political fictions, post-humanist and postcolonial rewritings to trauma narratives, risk narratives, literary disaster discourses and apocalyptic scenarios. Featuring theoretical and analytical approaches with insights borrowed from multiple disciplines, this book will be of interest for scholars and researchers working in the fields of literary and cultural studies, as well as the general reader.

This is the first single-author study of the genres and roots of popular literature in its relation to film and television, exploring the effects of academic snobbery on the teaching of popular literature. Designed for classroom use by students of literature and film (and their teachers), it offers case studies in quest literature, detective fiction, the status of the outlaw and outsider, and the interdependence of self, other and the uncanny. It challenges perceived notions of, and prejudices against, popular literature, and affirms its connection with the deepest human experiences.

This book represents a contribution to both border studies and short story studies. In today’s world, there is ample evidence of the return of borders worldwide: as material reality, as a concept, and as a way of thinking. This collection of critical essays focuses on the ways in which the contemporary British short story mirrors, questions and engages with border issues in national and individual life. At the same time, the concept of the border, as well as neighbouring notions of liminality and intersectionality, is used to illuminate the short story’s unique aesthetic potential. The first section, “Geopolitics and Grievable Lives”, includes chapters that address the various ways in which contemporary stories engage with our newly bordered world and borders within contemporary Britain. The second section examines how British short stories engage with “Ethnicity and Liminal Identities”, while the third, “Animal Encounters and Metamorphic Bodies”, focuses on stories concerned with epistemological borders and borderlands of existence and identity. Taken together, the chapters in this volume demonstrate the varied and complex ways in which British short stories in the twenty-first century engage with the concept of the border.

Age is a missing category in Irish literary criticism and this book is the first to explore a range of familiar and not so familiar Irish texts through a gerontological lens. Drawing on the latest writing in humanistic, critical and cultural gerontology, this study examines the portrayal of ageing in fiction by Elizabeth Bowen, Molly Keane, Deirdre Madden, Anne Enright, Iris Murdoch, John Banville, John McGahern, Norah Hoult and Edna O’Brien, among others. The chapters follow a logical thematic progression from efforts to hold back time, to resisting the decline narrative of ageing, solitary ageing versus ageing in the community, and dementia and the world of the bedbound and dying. One chapter analyses the changing portrayal of older people in the Irish short story. Recent demographic shifts in Ireland have focused attention on an increasing ageing population, making this study a timely intervention in the field of literary gerontology.

This book comprehensively analyzes COVID-19 and its impact as well as the response from the perspectives of humanities and social sciences. This book covers topics ranging from geopolitical relations to regional integration, public health governance and even the evolution of professional practices in the time of COVID-19. It constitutes a precious and timely interdisciplinary reference for anyone aspiring not only to grasp the origins and dynamics of the present challenge, but also to identify future opportunities for further growth and holistic progress for humanity.