Opening the Field: Irish Women, Texts and Contexts

by Patricia Boyle Haberstroh (Editor)

Overview

One of the defining moments in late twentieth-century Irish literature was the publication of The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (1991), which immediately created a controversy. This extensive collection, covering more than a thousand years, was marked by the virtual absence of female writers. To fill this gap, Cork University Press published The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing: Irish Women's Writing and Traditions in 2002.



In response to both of these texts, Opening the Field offers a collection of essays in which ten prominent critics each examine a text by an Irish woman, applying a specific feminist perspective. The strategy behind the book is to demonstrate the different varieties of feminist criticism and the numerous ways in which books by Irish women can be read, taking into account both the text under consideration and the contexts in which it was written and can/might be read.



This collection will be valuable for scholars in both Irish Studies and Women's Studies; it will also serve as a useful classroom text, as its several perspectives combine with close readings of many works thus serving well as supplementary reading for classes in Irish literature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781859184103
Publisher:	Cork University Press
Publication date:	04/30/2007
Pages:	188
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Patricia Boyle Haberstroh teaches in the Department of Fine Arts, La Salle University, and is the editor of Opening the Field: Irish Women, Texts and Contexts (2007, Cork University Press).

Christine St. Peter is a professor at the University of Victoria, Canada.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements; Introduction—Patricia Boyle Haberstroh and Christine St. Peter; 1) Engendering the Postmodern Canon? The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, Volumes IV & V: Women’s Writing and Traditions—Gerardine Meaney; 2) Becoming the Patriarch? Masculinity in Maria Edgeworth’s Ormond—Eiléan Ni Chuilleanáin; 3) Stuck on the Canvas: Harriet Martin’s Canvassing and Locational Feminism—Heidi Hansson; 4) Re-reading Peig Sayers: Women’s Autobiography, Social History and Narrative Art—Patricia Coughlin; 5) ‘But Greek…usually knows Greek’: Recognizing Queer Sexuality in Kate O’Brien’s Mary Lavelle—Katherine O’Donnell; 6) Feminist Meanings of Presence and Performance in Theatre: Marina Carr’s Portia Coughlan—Cathy Leeney; 7) ‘Wide open…to mirth and wonder’: Twentieth-Century Sheela-Na-Gigs as Multiple Signifiers of the Female Body in Ireland—Luz Mar Gonzáles Arias; 8) All of Their Own Making: Contemporary Women’s Poetry from Northern Ireland—Rebecca Pelan; 9) ‘Diving into the Wreck’: Mary Morrissy’s Mother of Pearl—Ann Owens Weekes; 10) Feminism and Postmodernism: Representations of Identity in Mary Morrissy’s The Pretender; List of Contributors; Notes; Index.

Editorial Reviews

The ten essays collected here are part of the self-perpetuating fallout of the controversy spawned by The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, ed. by Seamus Deane (CH, Apr'92, 29-4334). Haberstroh (La Salle Univ.) and St. Peter (Univ. of Victoria, Canada)--themselves authors of outstanding books on contemporary Irish women (respectively, Women Creating Women, CH, Jul'96, 33-6148, and Changing Ireland, CH, Oct'00, 38-0812)--showcase a variety of feminist analytical methods applied across a broad range of artistic forms over a 1,000-year time span. Contributors use psychoanalysis, locational feminism, lesbian studies, queer theory, materialist feminism, postmodernism, body theory, postcolonialism, gender theory, and cultural studies to shape their readings of "lost," popular, less familiar, and canonic works of fiction, poetry, visual art, autobiography, and drama (text and performance). However, any "complex feminist debate" in this field is not, for these authors, within feminist Irish studies, since they do not debate much of anything. The personal testimony that opens many essays is sometimes more interesting than the analysis-interpretation that follows the summary of the theorist(s) to be applied, the latter being de rigueur in such criticism. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

Choice

The ten essays collected here are part of the self-perpetuating fallout of the controversy spawned by The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, ed. by Seamus Deane (CH, Apr'92, 29-4334). Haberstroh (La Salle Univ.) and St. Peter (Univ. of Victoria, Canada)--themselves authors of outstanding books on contemporary Irish women (respectively, Women Creating Women, CH, Jul'96, 33-6148, and Changing Ireland, CH, Oct'00, 38-0812)--showcase a variety of feminist analytical methods applied across a broad range of artistic forms over a 1,000-year time span. Contributors use psychoanalysis, locational feminism, lesbian studies, queer theory, materialist feminism, postmodernism, body theory, postcolonialism, gender theory, and cultural studies to shape their readings of "lost," popular, less familiar, and canonic works of fiction, poetry, visual art, autobiography, and drama (text and performance). However, any "complex feminist debate" in this field is not, for these authors, within feminist Irish studies, since they do not debate much of anything. The personal testimony that opens many essays is sometimes more interesting than the analysis-interpretation that follows the summary of the theorist(s) to be applied, the latter being de rigueur in such criticism. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

From the Publisher