‘Lost, Unhappy and at Home’: The Impact of Violence on Irish Culture: Volume II: Socio-Cultural Aspects(134 Reimagining Ireland)

In light of the fact that the thirty-year struggle known as the ‘Troubles’ is still the longest civil conflict in modern European history, it is perhaps inevitable that violence looms large in in contemporary Irish culture and society. This volume delves into the various expressions of this phenomenon, its repercussions, forms of resistance and, particularly, its cultural representations. Comprising fifteen chapters penned by experts in Irish studies, the book delivers a historiographical analysis of significant facets of Irish history marked by conflict, and explores the poetry, theatre, and film crafted by Irish artists to mediate the experience of violence and trauma. The chapters are organized into four sections, History, Film, Theatre and Poetry, covering all aspects of violence in its broadest sense, from the banal and invisible to armed conflict, from racial and ethnic discrimination to gender-based violence and ecocide. The book provides the reader with a comprehensive picture of the ways in which it has mapped Ireland, and the modes of opposition to it.

Table of Contents:
Contents: Luca Bertolani Azeredo: Manly Physique, Attractive Uniforms and Drill Manoeuvres – Yann Bévant: From the Good Friday Agreement to Brexit, an Assessment of Republican and Northern Irish Politics – Pilar Iglesias-Aparicio: Historical Institutional Abuse against Women in Ireland and Spain during the Twentieth Century – Marie Jonietz: ‘Dreamers Turned Fighters’: Celticism as an Ideological Foundation for Bloodshed and Self-sacrifice in the Easter Rising – Sara Romero Otero: ‘Those who had no voice’: Ethnicity, Racism, and Discrimination during and after the Northern Irish Troubles in Anna Lo’s The Place I Call Home – E. Guillermo Iglesias-Díaz: Beyond Sectarian Violence: Vulnerable Male Bodies in the Communitas through a Situated Gaze – Dina Pedro: Representing the Aftermath of Ireland’s Great Famine in Neo-Victorianism on Screen: Colonization and Forced Diaspora in Carnival Row (2019–2023) – Stephanie Schwerter: The Experience of Political Violence in Belfast and Mickybo and Me – Timothy J. White: From the Troubles to a Troubled Peace: Representation of Violence in Recent Northern Irish Film – Lisa Fitzpatrick: Gender, Activism, and Performance in Northern Ireland – Dónall Mac Cathmhaoill: The Trouble with Trouble: Restaging Historic Acts of Violence – J. Javier Torres-Fernández: Exploring LGBTIQA+ Violence, Trauma and Shame in A Cure for Homosexuality (2005) by Neil Watkins – Sara de Sousa: ‘This brute site’: Violence in the Mothering/ Ageing Phenomenological Continuum in the Poetry of Eavan Boland and Sinéad Morrissey – Przemysław Michalski: The Problem of Purposive Violence in Seamus Heaney’s ‘Bog Poems’ – Rosanne Gallenne and Paula Villalba Pérez: Ways of Violence in Medbh McGuckian’s and Sinéad Morrissey’s Nature Poems.

About the Author :
Maria Gaviña-Costero is a lecturer at the Department of English and German at the University of Valencia (Spain). Dina Pedro is Assistant Professor at the Department of English and German at the University of Valencia (Spain). Dónall Mac Cathmhaoill is a lecturer in Creative Writing at The Open University (UK) specializing in theatre and screenwriting.