Postcolonial Settings in the Fiction of James Clarence Mangan, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and Bram Stoker: Strange Surroundings (New Directions in Irish and Irish American Literature)

This book explores how three Anglo-Irish writers, J.C. Mangan, J.S. Le Fanu and Bram Stoker, use settings in their short fictions to recreate, depict and confront Ireland’s colonial situation in the nineteenth century. This study provides an innovative approach by targeting a genre (the short story) which has not been explored in its entirety― certainly not within nineteenth century Ireland - much less using a postcolonial approach to the short story. Added to this is the fact that it analyses how these writers used settings as an anticolonial tool. To do so, the book is divided into two major sections, an analysis of Irish settings and non-Irish ones. It works on the premise that all three writers used the idea of displacement to target colonialism and its effects on Irish society. In short, this book addresses a gap in scholarship, as the Irish Gothic short story as a decolonizing tool has not been sufficiently and globally studied. Contents About the Author Chapter 1: Introduction Postcolonialism, Ireland and the Nineteenth Century Irish Gothic in the Nineteenth Century The Irish Gothic Short Story and the Nineteenth Century Setting the Scene—Postcolonialism, Nineteenth-Century Irish Gothic Short Fiction and the Writings of J.C. Mangan, J.S. Le Fanu and Bram Stoker Survey of Chapters References Chapter 2: The Spaces in Which I/Eye Gaze: J.C. Mangan’s Satirical Appropriation of Colonial Views Parsing Space, Appropriating the Gazing Eye A Hyperbolic Style—Satire as a Decolonising Tool A Depressing Landscape Conclusion References Chapter 3: J.S. Le Fanu’s Rhetoric of Nostalgia and the No-Home Noble Castle, Static Visions The Anglo-Irish Manor as a No-Home Conclusion References Chapter 4: The Anticolonial Heart of Rural Ireland: Possession and Dispossession in Bram Stoker’s Short Fiction A Colonial System in Warped Replica Communal Spaces and Shared Revolts—“The Man from Shorrox” Conclusion References Chapter 5: Roaming the World Around: Exile in J.C. Mangan’s Narratives Bargaining the Social Ladder—Exoticism and the Figure of the Colonised Exile Roaming the Earth and Back—Colonial Exiles Conclusion References Chapter 6: Haunted Manor Houses and Bumping Monsters: The Paradigm of the No-Home in J.S. Le Fanu’s Narratives A Pattern of Urban Encasement The Unredeemed Ghosts of the Anglo-Irish Manor Unsettling Monsters of the Mind Conclusion References Chapter 7: Adverse Landscapes, Unwelcoming Homes: (Un)Heroic Colonial Journeys in Bram Stoker’s Short Fictions No Return Home: Nature as an Anticolonial Element Disowning the Colonial Hero Conclusion References Chapter 8: Conclusions Index