Changing Ireland : Strategies in Contemporary Women's Fiction

During the past twenty-five years, Ireland has seen an explosion of women's fiction - hundreds of published works that reimagine the inherited literary traditions and the social contexts of women's lives. Changing Ireland examines women's use of historical fiction, exile literature, Northern war narratives, speculative fiction, and classic 'realism', and looks at the local Irish forms of international women's genres like the romance novel and feminist fiction. The Last Three Decades Have Witnessed An Explosion Of Women's Writing In Ireland. During These Few Years Hundreds Of Novels And Short-story Collections Have Appeared, Works That Have Invented A New Ireland - On Both Sides Of The Border - And A New Place For Women In It. Changing Ireland Explores Just This: A Fractured People Re-imagining Itself In The Minds Of Gifted Women. The First Book To Address An Extraordinary Achievement, This Study Examines The Recent Fiction Within Its Social Contexts, Alert To The Historical And Political Realities From Which It Emerges. The Seven Chapters That Comprise Changing Ireland Look At Women's Strategic Reworkings Of Such Inherited Genres As Exilic Writing, Historical Fiction, War Literature Of The North, Bildung Novels, Fictionalized Memoirs, Speculative Fiction And Classic Realism. The Also Consider The Local Shapes Irish Women Are Giving To The International 'women's' Blockbuster And To Feminist Fiction.--book Jacket. Introduction -- Authorship, The Forbidden Country -- Women Writing Exile -- Returning From The 'ghost Place': Recomposing History -- 'the War That Has Gone Into Us': Troubles From The North -- Traveling Back Home: The Blockbusters Of Patricia Scanlan And Maeve Binchy -- Feminist Fiction. Christine St. Peter. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Cover......Page 1 Contents......Page 8 Acknowledgements......Page 9 1 Introduction......Page 12 2 Authorship, the Forbidden Country......Page 22 3 Women Writing Exile......Page 51 4 Returning from the ‘Ghost Place’: Recomposing History......Page 77 5 ‘The War That Has Gone into Us’: Troubles from the North......Page 105 6 Traveling Back Home: the Blockbusters of Patricia Scanlan and Maeve Binchy......Page 133 7 Feminist Fiction......Page 158 Notes......Page 181 Bibliography......Page 203 Index......Page 219 Getting published is, for any writer, a rare achievement.