Irish Modernism and the Global Primitive: (New Directions in Irish & Irish American Literature)

This book scrutinizes the way modern Irish writers exploited or surrendered to primitivism, and how primitivism functions as an idealized nostalgia for the past as a potential representation of difference and connection.

Table of Contents:
Ambivalent Primitives: Responding to the Celtic Revival * Queering the Revivalist's Pitch: Joycean Engagements with Primitivism - John McCourt * Robots and Rebels: Technological and Organic Discourse in Pearse's Political Essays - Barbara A. Suess * "Magnificent Words and Gestures": Defining the Primitive in Synge's The Aran Islands - Elizabeth Gilmartin * Primitivism, Ethnography, and Cultural Translation * The Ethnographic Roots of Joyce's Modernism: Exhibiting Ireland's Primitives in the National Museum and the "Nestor" Episode - Kathleen St. Peters Lancia * Visible Others: Photography and Romantic Ethnography in Ireland - Justin Carville * "The Loveliness Which Has Not Yet Come Into the World": Translation as a Revisitation of Joyce's (Irish) Modernism - M. Teresa Caneda-Cabrera * Primitive Emancipation: Religion, Sexuality, and Freedom in Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses - Maria McGarrity * Gender, Primitivism, and the Body * "Reluctant Indians": Irish Identity and Racial Masquerade - Greg Winston * Female Militancy and Irish Primitivism: Dorothy Macardle's Earth-Bound - Lisa Weihman * Domestic Gothic, the Global Primitive, and Gender Relations in Elizabeth Bowen's The Last September and The House in Paris - Phyllis Lassner and Paula Derdiger * The Gaelic Athletic Association, Joyce, and the Primitive Body - Claire A. Culleton

About the Author :
Maria McGarrity is Associate Professor of English, Long Island University.Claire A. Culleton is Professor of Modern British and Irish Literature, Kent State University.

Review :
"Irish Modernism and the Global Primitive is a very timely intervention in the new Irish studies. The topic of primitivism is everywhere in Irish and post-colonial studies, but only sporadically has it been given sustained attention; the strength of this collection is that it returns our attention to this fundamental topic at what is perhaps a key moment in the development of the new Irish studies. It is, overall, a wonderful and exciting collection." - Enda Duffy, Professor and Graduate Advisor, Department of English, University of California, Santa Barbara