Literary Landscapes of Ireland: Geographies of Irish Stories, 1929-1946

“This book offers a highly evocative read for scholars in the entire spectrum of the human sciences. Among its most eager readers in twenty-first century Europe may be those twentieth century emigrants who returned ‘home,’ after many years of longing, to discover dramatically transformed - and often unwelcoming — ‘chronotopes.’ This book could yield an important on lesson potential connections between liminality and creativity.” – Professor Emeritus Anne Buttimer, University College Dublin

“. . . should be required reading for anyone interested in the relationship between people and place in Ireland but also those interested in the use of literature as a source for exploring culture and society.” – Dr. Mark Hennessy, Trinity College Dublin

“Dr. Travis writes in a rapidly emerging and popular interdisciplinary genre —literary geography. His book would be welcomed in research libraries and destined to reside on the bookshelves of many humanists, social scientists — not a few natural scientists -- and lovers of the Emerald Isle in general. Erudite aficionados of Ireland will find it irresistible—and for good reason: literary geographies of which this [work] is exemplary meld diverse disciplinary interests through the combination of (more like the alchemical outcome of) geographical savvy and literary heat.” – Prof. David J. Nemeth, Univeristy of Toledo

List of Illustrations
Foreword Professor Anne Buttimer
Acknowledgements
1. Ireland 1929-1946, Mapping Literature and Place
Writers and period
Ireland: 1922-1945
From Saorstát to Eire
A Protestant Parliament
A Protestant State Censorship
‘flux and uncertainty’
The Practice of Literary Geography
Conceptualising a Literary Geography
Historical Poetics
Towards a ‘Sense of Place’
Irish Writers: 1929-1946
2. Rumours from the Lower Hills, Peadar O’Donnell
Lifepath
Representing the ‘West’
Adrigoole (1929)
The Lower Hills
The Hiring Fair
The Bog
The Knife (1930)
The Valley
Activist & Oglach
Wrack (1933)
The Island
The Sea
An Caoineadh (The Keening)
Deconstructing the ‘Idyll’
3. Poetry of the Fields, Patrick Kavanagh
Lifepath
The Green Fool (1938)
The Lore of Place
The Great Hunger (1942)
Lifecourse wordscapes
4. Elysium & Exile, Forrest Reid and Michael McLaverty
Forrest Reid: ‘Crying for Elysium’
Lifepath
Uncle Stephen (1931)
Space of Genius Loci
The Retreat or the Machinations of Henry (1936)
Ruins and Graveyards
Spectral Landscapes
Michael McLavery: Emigration and Exile
Lifepath
Rathlin Island
Short Stories (1933-1937)
Call My Brother Back (1939)
Belfast
Elysium & Exile
5. House Islands, Elizabeth Bowen and Molly Keane
Elizabeth Bowen: ‘A Culture in Decline’
Lifepath
The Last September (1929)
Inside
Outside
Molly Keane I M. J. Farrell: ‘Estate of Living Memory’
Lifepath
Mad Puppetstown (1931)
The Golden Age
The War
The Free State
Place and Memory
‘The House-Island’
6. The Provincial Town, Kate O’Brien
Lifepath
The Irish ‘Petty-Bourgeois Town’ 1789-1937
Pray for the Wanderer (1938)
The ‘Historical Poetics’ of Saorstát ‘Mellick’
The Politics of Sexuality and Censorship
‘Archaism and Ruin’
7. City of Word and Space, Flann O’Brien
Lifepath
At Swim Two Birds (1939)
Lefebvre’s Spatiologies
Le Percu’ (everyday life)
Le Vecu (lived space of the real-and-imagined)
Lower Leeson Street (Red Swan Hotel)
Ringsend Cowboys (Cattle N Ranch)
Pearse Street (Palace Cinema)
Urban Thresholds
8. Beyond the Cartesian Pale, Samuel Beckett
Lifepath
More Pricks Than Kicks (1934)
Murphy (1938)
The Cartesian Comedy
Magdalen Mental Mercyseat
Saint-Lô (1945)
Le Fin (1946)
Beyond the Cartesian
9. Irish Literary Geographies, 1929-1946
Deconstructing the ‘Idyll’
Lifecourse Wordscapes
Spectral Lanscapes
The Island and Peripherality
The ‘House-Island’
‘Archaism and Ruin’ -The Provincial Town
Urban Thresholds
Beyond the Cartesian
Bibliography
Index