Cover; Title Page; Copyright Page; Dedication; Contents; Acknowledgements; Introduction. The Donkeys and the Narrowbacks: Contemporary Circus Animals; Part One Memoirs Defining Where We Are Now; 1. Defining the Object for Struggle: Epistemology in the Age of Autobiography Frank McCourt, Angela's Ashes and Seamus Deane, Reading in the Dark; 2. Belfast and South Boston: Cut off from Serious Consideration Gerry Adams, Before the Dawn and Michael Patrick MacDonald, All Souls; 3. The Void of Irish Identity: Nuala O'Faolain, Are You Somebody. Goodbye Yeats and O'Neill is a reading of one or two books recently written by the following major authors: Roddy Doyle, Colm Tibn, John McGahern, William Trevor, Seamus Deane, Nuala O'Faolain, Patrick McCabe, Colum McCann, Nick Laird, Gerry Adams, Claire Boylan, Frank McCourt, Tim O'Brien, Michael Patrick MacDonald, Alice McDermott, Edward J. Delaney, Beth Lordan, William Kennedy, Thomas Kelly, and Mary Gordon. The study argues that farce has been a major mode of recent Irish and Irish-American fiction and memoira primary indicator of the state of both Irish and Irish-American cultures in Part Two The Writers Strike Back: Using Irony to Subvert the Fascination of Cultural Studies4. Tim O'Brien's Ironic Aesthetic: Faith and the Nature of a "True" Story (co-authored with John Briggs); 5. The Delusion of Cultural Studies: Colm Tibn, The Blackwater Lightship; Part Three Serious and Not-So-Serious Farce in Contemporary Irish Fiction; 6. Picaresque Farce: Nick Laird, Utterly Monkey; 7. Icons for the New Age: The Transvestite in Patrick McCabe's Bre.
|