Body Politics in Contemporary Irish Women's Fiction - (Bloomsbury Studies in Global Women's Writing) by Ellen Scheible (Hardcover)

About the Book

Scheible examines how modern and contemporary Irish fiction often employs the Irish domestic interior and representations of the female body as Mother Ireland to emphasize the biopolitical relationship between Irish femininity, female sexuality, and the nation.

Book Synopsis

Exploring twentieth- and twenty-first century texts that wrestle with the Irish domestic interior as a sexualized and commodified space, this book provides readings of the power and authority of the feminized body in Ireland.

Scheible dissects the ways that 'the woman-as-symbol' remains consistent in Irish literary representations of national experience in Irish fiction and shows how this problematizes the role of women in Ireland by underscoring the oppression of sexuality and gender that characterized Irish culture during the twentieth century.

Examining works by Elizabeth Bowen, Pamela Hinkson, Emma Donoghue, Tana French, Sally Rooney and James Joyce, this book demonstrates that the definition of Irish nationhood in our contemporary experience of capitalism and biopolitics is dependent on the intertwining and paradoxical tropes of a traditional, yet equally sexual, feminine identity which has been quelled by violence and reproduction.

Review Quotes

"This is a timely and valuable book. The texts under discussion are well-chosen, the prose is admirably lucid and the analysis is illuminating." --Ailbhe Darcy, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, Cardiff University, UK

"Overall, this is a useful volume that adds to the critical conversation about female and national identity in Irish fiction by engaging with contemporary literary and commercial texts that have so far gotten comparatively little critical attention" --CHOICE

About the Author

Ellen Scheible is Professor of English and coordinator of Irish Studies at Bridgewater State University, USA.