Dr. Brian Cliff Sophister Option: Contemporary Fiction 1/2 Michaelmas Term 2009 Readings Week 1: Critical and Contextual Introduction Critical reading: Colin Graham, "Liminal Spaces: Postcolonialism and Post-nationalism,"

Deconstructing Ireland: Identity, Theory, Culture (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2001) 81-101; Conor McCarthy, "Introduction" from Modernisation, Crisis & Culture in Ireland 1969-1992 (Dublin: Four Courts, 2000) 11-44; Linden Peach, "Interruptive Narratives: Emergent Voices and Haunted Presents," The Contemporary Irish Novel: Critical Readings (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2004) 1-21; Eve Patten, "Contemporary Irish Fiction," The Cambridge Companion to the Irish Novel, ed. John Wilson Foster (Cambridge: CUP, 2006) 259-275; Gerry Smyth, The Novel and the Nation (London: Pluto, 1997) 20-32, 48-62.

Week 2: Bernard McLaverty, Cal (1983) Critical reading: Richard Haslam, "Critical Reductionism and Bernard Mac Laverty’s Cal," in Representing

the Troubles: Texts & Images, 1970-2000, ed. Cliff and Walshe (Dublin: Four Courts, 2004) 39-54 (handout); Elmer Kennedy-Andrews, "The Novel and the Northern Troubles," in The Cambridge Companion to the Irish Novel, ed. Foster (Cambridge: CUP, 2006) 238-258.

Week 3: Deirdre Madden, One By One in the Darkness (1992) Critical reading: Michael Parker, Northern Irish Literature 1956-2006: The Imprint of History, Vol. 2

(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) 172-183; Heather Ingman, Twentieth-Century Fiction by Irish Women: Nation and Gender (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007) 162-166, Christine St. Peter, Changing Ireland: Strategies in Contemporary Women's Fiction (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000) 117-121.

Week 4: Robert McLiam Wilson, Eureka Street (1996) Critical reading: Linden Peach, Chapter 2 "Posting the Present: Modernity and Modernization in

Glenn Patterson's Fat Lad (1992) and Robert McLiam Wilson's Eureka Street (1996)," The Contemporary Irish Novel: Critical Readings (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2004) 22-38; Richard Kirkland, "Bourgeois Redemptions: The Fictions of Glenn Patterson and Robert McLiam Wilson," in Harte and Parker, eds., 213-231.

Week 5: Glenn Patterson, The International (1999, rpt. 2008) Critical reading: Anne Enright, preface; Glenn Patterson, selections from Lapsed Protestant; Jonathan

Bardon, from Belfast: A Century (Belfast: Blackstaff, 1999); reviews and interviews (pdf). Note: Glenn Patterson will be joining us for the second half of the seminar. Week 6: Patrick McCabe, The Butcher Boy (1992) Critical reading: Tom Herron, “ContamiNation: Patrick McCabe and Colm Tóibín’s Pathographies

of the Republic,” in Contemporary Irish Fiction: Themes, Tropes, Theories, ed. Harte and Parker (London: Macmillan, 2000) 168-191; Donna Potts, “From Tír na nÓg to Tír na Muck: Patrick McCabe’s The Butcher Boy,” New Hibernia Review 3.3 (Autumn 1999) 83-95.

Week 7: Reading Week Week 8: Emma Donoghue, Hood (1995) Critical reading: selected interviews; Antoinette Quinn, "New Noises from the Woodshed: The

Novels of Emma Donoghue," in Harte and Parker, eds., 145-167; Emma Donoghue, "Noises from Woodsheds: Tales of Irish Lesbians, 1886-1989," in Lesbian and Gay Visions of Ireland, ed. Íde O'Carroll and Eoin Collins (London: Cassell, 1995) 158-170.

Week 9: Anne Enright, What Are You Like? (2000) Critical reading: selected interviews and reviews Week 10: Paul Murray, An Evening of Long Goodbyes (2003). Note: Paul Murray will be joining

us for the second half of the seminar. Week 11: essay consultation Week 12: a contemporary novel chosen by the class Individual texts Donoghue, Emma. Hood. (ISBN 014023084X) Enright, Anne. What Are You Like? (ISBN 0099284340) MacLaverty, Bernard. Cal. (ISBN 0140817891) Madden, Deirdre. One by One in the Darkness (ISBN 0571175511) McCabe, Patrick. The Butcher Boy. (ISBN 0330328743) Murray, Paul. An Evening of Long Goodbyes. (ISBN 0141009934) Patterson, Glenn. The International (Blackstaff reprint edition). (ISBN 0856408123) Wilson, Robert McLiam. Eureka Street. (ISBN 0749396725)

Dr. Brian Cliff Sophister Option: Contemporary Fiction 2/2 Michaelmas Term 2009 Critical Reading: Cleary, Joe. Literature, Partition and the Nation State: Culture and Conflict in Ireland, Israel and Palestine.

Cambridge: CUP, 2002. Corcoran, Neil. After Yeats and Joyce: Reading Modern Irish Literature. Oxford: OUP, 1997. Foster, John Wilson, ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Irish Novel. Cambridge: CUP, 2006. Graham, Colin. Deconstructing Ireland: Identity, Theory, Culture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2001. Harte, Liam and Michael Parker, eds. Contemporary Irish Fiction. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000. Haslam, Richard. "Critical Reductionism and Bernard MacLaverty's Cal." In Representing the Troubles:

Texts & Images, 1970-2000. Ed. Brian Cliff and Éibhear Walshe. Dublin: Four Courts, 2004. 39-54.

Imhof, Rüdiger. The Modern Irish Novel: Irish Novelists after 1945. Dublin: Wolfhound, 2002. Ingman, Heather. Twentieth-Century Fiction by Irish Women: Nation and Gender. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. Jeffers, Jennifer. The Irish Novel and the End of the Century. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002. Kearney, Richard. Postnationalist Ireland: Politics, Culture, Philosophy. London: Routledge, 1997. Kennedy-Andrews, Elmer. Fiction and the Northern Ireland Troubles. Dublin: Four Courts, 2002. O'Brien, George. "Contemporary Prose in English: 1940-2000." The Cambridge History of Irish

Literature, Volume II: 1890-2000. Cambridge: CUP, 2006. 421-477. O'Toole, Fintan. "Afterword: Irish Literature in English in the New Millennium." The Cambridge

History of Irish Literature, Volume II: 1890-2000. Cambridge: CUP, 2006. 628-642. Parker, Michael. Northern Irish Literature 1956-2006: The Imprint of History (2 volumes). Basingstoke:

Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Patten, Eve. "Fiction in conflict: Northern Ireland's prodigal novelists." Peripheral Visions: Images of

Nationhood in Contemporary British Fiction. Ed. Ian A. Bell. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1995. 128-148.

Patterson, Glenn. Lapsed Protestant. Dublin: New Island, 2006. Peach, Linden. The Contemporary Irish Novel: Critical Readings. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2004. Ryan, Ray, ed. Writing in the Irish Republic: Literature, Culture, Politics. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000. St. Peter, Christine. Changing Ireland: Strategies in Contemporary Women's Fiction. Basingstoke: Macmillan,

2000. Smyth, Gerry. The Novel & the Nation: Studies in the New Irish Fiction. London: Pluto, 1997.