This collection looks beyond Ireland metaphorically as well as geographically, moving beyond nationalism towards the culturally diverse, beyond a bilingual Ireland to a polyvocal one, beyond the imagined community towards a virtual one, beyond a territorial Ireland to an excentric one. The focus is on outsiders, ranging from Colm Tóibín's subversion of establishment norms to Paul Muldoon's immersion in Jewish discourse to John Banville's extensions of the parameters of Irishness to the Lass of Aughrim finding a new role through her exclusion from the domestic hearth. The contributors to the volume work mainly with poetry and prose fiction, but genres such as autobiography, the essay and song lyrics are also represented. The issues addressed all look 'beyond Ireland'. In considering the creative frictions and fictions that result from the dissolving of old loyalties, these essays examine contested concepts such as 'the nation', and attempt to shed light on global forces that demand cultural re-definitions and transformations. The world order that let loose the Celtic Tiger has brought, together with a diversified Ireland, new forms of dependence. It is one of the main aims of this book to explore how Irish writers have regarded this diversification and contested that dependence.

Autorentext

Hedda Friberg-Harnesk is Associate Professor at Mid Sweden University, Härnösand. Within the field of Irish Studies, her primary research interest is the fiction of John Banville.
Gerald Porter is Professor of English Literature and Culture at the University of Vaasa, Finland. His main field of interest is in the mediation of vernacular song, and he has also published on constructions of national identity and on literary representations of social disorder.
Joakim Wrethed is Visiting Assistant Professor in English Literature at the University of Stockholm, Sweden. His main fields of research are Irish Studies, phenomenology, aesthetics and metaphor theory.

Inhalt

Contents: Charles I. Armstrong: Drinking Tea, Drawing Ideograms and Making Waves: Pursuing the 'Japanese Effect' in Irish Poetry - Billy Gray: 'Less like marching, more like meditation': Zen Buddhism, Haiku, and the Theme of Tolerance in the Work of Chris Arthur - Åke Persson: Recalibrating the Mind: Globalization, Viticulture, Wine-Tasting and Change in Kate O'Riordan's The Memory Stones - Carmen Zamorano Llena: Multiculturalism and the Dark Underbelly of the Celtic Tiger: Redefinitions of Irishness in Contemporary Ireland - Róisín Keys: 'Why is a gramophone like a parrot?': Intermediality and (Inter)cultural Identity in Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa - Anne Karhio: 'Immram', 'Haggadah' and the New Jersey Suburb: Jewish and Irish America in Paul Muldoon's Poetry - Martin Shaw: Warning Signs and Reflexivity in Nan Joyce's Anti-Traveller Protest Story - Lene Yding Pedersen: Cultural Images and Cross-Cultural Encounters in Colum McCann's Zoli - Ruben Moi: 'Drawn by the colour and light': Ekphrases and Aesthetics in the Poetics of Derek Mahon - Gerald Porter: Distant Transformations: The Shifting Topologies of a Diaspora Song - Joakim Wrethed: 'Horribly pleasurable transgression': Metaphor, Theology and Evil in John Banville's The Book of Evidence - Hedda Friberg-Harnesk: Encounters Across Borders in a European Arena: John Banville's Kepler and Carl-Henning Wijkmark's Dacapo - Britta Olinder: Cross-Cultural Encounters and Clashes in John Hewitt's Work - Anders Olsson: Walk the Line: Experience and Interpretation in Colm Tóibín's Bad Blood - Ronald Paul: Frederick Engels and the International Significance of Irish History.