THE ANGLO-IRISH BIG HOUSE NOVEL (HIGGINS, LEVER, BANVILLE, EDGEWORTH, KEANE).
Item
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Title
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THE ANGLO-IRISH BIG HOUSE NOVEL (HIGGINS, LEVER, BANVILLE, EDGEWORTH, KEANE).
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Identifier
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AAI8713771
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identifier
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8713771
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Creator
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KREILKAMP, VERA.
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Contributor
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Morris Dickstein
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Date
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1987
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, English
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Abstract
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Big House novels in Anglo-Irish literature, set on country estates owned by members of the Protestant Ascendancy class, describe the tensions between two cultures: an Anglo-Irish gentry society and the subject population of Catholic Ireland. In the course of almost two centuries, these Anglo-Irish novels exhibit recurring themes and conventions, most notably the symbolic setting of a beleaguered and decaying Big House collapsing before the forces of Anglo-Irish improvidence and the rising nationalism of Catholic Irish society. The figure of the deracinated or alienated landlord, whose irresponsibility is experienced by his tenants as the loss of order and security, recurs throughout the tradition. Through devious economic manipulations, the figure of an outsider--often a Catholic land agent or rising professional--brings down the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Big House. Major novels in this tradition provide an interpretation of Irish history which differs sharply from Yeats's elegiac celebration of the Ascendancy class. By examining the discrepancy between the semi-feudal ideals of a colonial Anglo-Irish society and the shabby realities of Big House life, the novelists create complex structures of irony.;This study examines major works of fiction in the Big House tradition, beginning with Maria Edgeworth's touchstone novel, Castle Rackrent, including nineteenth-century Gothic versions by Maturin and Le Fanu, and concluding with several innovative works by contemporary novelists who recreate or reinvent the form. The following novels examined suggest a continuity in Anglo-Irish fiction: Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent (1800) and Ennui (1809); Charles Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer (1820); Charles Lever's The Martins of Cro'Martin (1856); Sheridan Le Fanu's Uncle Silas (1864); Edith Somerville's Mount Music (1919) and The Big House of Inver (1925); Elizabeth Bowen's The Last September (1929) and The Heat of the Day (1949); Molly Keane's Two Days in Aragon (1941), Good Behaviour (1982) and Time After Time (1983); Aidan Higgins' Langrishe, Go Down (1966); Jennifer Johnston's The Captains and the Kings (1972) and How Many Miles to Babylon (1974); John Banville's Birchwood (1973) and The Newton Letter (1982); William Trevor's Fools of Fortune (1983).
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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English
