Contemporary Irish and Welsh Women's Fiction: Gender, Desire and Power (University of Wales Press - Writing Wales in English)

1. Introduction -- 2. Unspoken Histories: Groundbreaking Short Fiction -- 3. Unspoken Desires: Writing Same-sex Relationships -- 4. 'Heroic Spaces': Re-imaging 'Ordinary' Lives -- 5. The Changing Self -- 6. Fields of Vision -- 7. Religion, Spirituality and Identity "This book is the first comparative study of fiction by late twentieth and twenty-first century women writers from Ireland, Northern Ireland and Wales. It breaks new ground in its comparative framework and in exploring texts that deserve more serious critical attention than they have received and which deal with subjects that have been previously absent from or marginalized in Welsh and Irish literary fiction in English." "The writing discussed approaches topics such as identity, sexuality, gender, family and nation in new and exciting ways. This pioneering, accessible study will therefore be useful to students of literature and to students interested in women's studies, gender studies and cultural studies." "Its vigorous interpretations of a wide range of texts within their cultural contexts provide innovative and refreshing perspectives on themes that are at the heart of Welsh, Irish and Celtic studies."--book jacket Contents 7 General Editor’s Preface 9 Postcolonialism and Wales: the Effects of Cultural Imperialism 11 'A serious Welsh novelist': Redressing the Balance 22 The Emergence of Humphreys as a Postcolonial Writer 56 The Consolidation of Strategies in Outside the House of Baal 87 Strategies of Resistance: the Use of Indigenous Myth 111 Strategies of Resistance: the Use of Indigenous History in 'The Land of the Living' Sequence 138 Strategies of Resistance: the Use of History in the Independent Novels of the 1980s and 1990s 164 Monstering and Disabling: Paradigms and Tropes of Dispossession 197 Postscript: Speaking Welsh in English – a Postcolonial Purpose 226 Notes 229 A Selected Bibliography of Emyr Humphreys’s Fiction and Essays 257 A Selected Bibliography of Writing on Emyr Humphreys’s Works 264 Bibliography 272 Index 295 This volume examines the question of how recent English-language poetry from Wales has responded to the nations diverse physical environments and human geography in order to crucially explore key issues in Welsh culture. Opening with an examination of poets from the 1960s forward, as well as the early works of R. S. Thomas, Welsh Environments in Contemporary Poetry subsequently concentrates on some of the late-twentieth centurys most prominent continental poets, including Gillian Clarke, Robert Minhinnick, Christine Evans, and Ian Davidson. Careful readings of texts reveal the ways in which these writers variously transform Welsh landscapes into poetic geographies, both abundantly physical and inescapably cultural. This book explores in detail the novels written by Emyr Humphreys during a timespan of over fifty years, from his first, A Little Kingdom, published in 1946, to The Gift of a Daughter, published in 1998. An early chapter comprises a literary biography with the following chapters devoted to: the early novels including A Toy Epic; a separate examination of Outside the House of Baal, considered by many to be his finest achievement; his use of Celtic myth as a patterning device; similarly his use of Welsh history is covered in 2 chapters; and finally his use of various postcolonial strategies. It also contains an extensive bibliography of work by and about Emyr Humphreys. Welsh writing has recently undergone an international renaissancehowever, very little of this attention has been directed toward womens fiction. Aimed at a general audience with a broad array of interests, Contemporary Irish and Welsh Womens Fiction is the first comparative study of fiction by late-twentieth and twenty-first-century women writers from Ireland, North Ireland, and Wales. This volume breaks new ground in its exploration of rich and critically-deserving texts that have previously been marginalized from much of Welsh and Irish literary fiction in English. "Welsh Environments in Contemporary Poetry examines the question of how recent English-language poetry from Wales has responded to the diverse physical environments of Wales. The first volume to offer a sustained assessment of Welsh poetry in English within the contest of recent developments in environmental literary criticism, this book also draws on aspects of human geography to explore the rich contemporary poetics of Welsh space and place."--Jacket Emyr Humphreys is perhaps best known for his works of fiction, such as A Toy Epic and Outside the House of Baal , which are important in part because of Humphreys ideas about Wales, Welsh history and culture, and the importance of a separate Welsh identity. Here Diane Green explores Humphreys practice in light of both his own theories of culture and fiction and from the viewpoint of a variety of models derived from postcolonial theory. Presents a comparative study of fiction by late twentieth and twenty-first century women writers from Ireland, Northern Ireland and Wales. This work is of interest to students interested in women's studies, gender studies, and cultural studies as well as Welsh, Irish and Celtic studies. This volume offers a section of the most important essays published by Emyr Humphreys over a 30-year period. The essays are prefaced by a series of discusssions which explore some of the intellectual concerns and motifs that have recurred throughout Humphreys'work. This title is a comparative story of fiction by the late 20th and 21st century women writers from Ireland, Northern Ireland and Wales Diane Green. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [247]-283) And Index.