Abstract
In this chapter we will interpret texts that present an unusual set of circumstances in the contemporary Irish novel. The novels in this chapter flagrantly disrupt the boundaries of gender and sexuality, which at first suggests that these texts are easily decipherable. Because of the evident and frequently ostentatious gender and sexual differences in such novels as Emma Donoghues Hood or Tom Lennons Crazy Love, we might assume that we are able to “see” and read the texts easily. But from the history of the Irish novel written in English, no precedent is available. In a recent collection, Sex, Nation, and Dissent in Irish Writing (1997), Eibhear Walshe brings together critics who focus on the intersection of homoeroticism, nationalism, and political radicalism. According to Walshe, the collection begins with “two moments in Irish history: the criminalisation of same-sex desire in Britain and Ireland by means of the Labouchere Amendment (1885), and the construction of the political and cultural project of the Celtic Revival with Yeats s first collection of poetry (1889).”1 A concern for Walshe is the fact that “a lesbian and gay presence within any national literature troubles privileged formations of what traditionally constituted ‘woman’ and ‘man.’”2 In this chapter I am not concerned with the formation or manifestation of a national literature in relation to the contemporary Irish novel; yet, issues of an Irish homosexual identity are apparent in the recent novels.
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Notes
See Sex, Nation, and Dissent in Irish Writing, ed. Eibhear Walshe (St. Martins, 1997), p. 2.
See Wilhelm Dilthey, “The Rise of Hermeneutics,” in The Hermeneutic Tradition: From Ast to Ricoeur, eds. Gayle M. Ormiston and Alan D. Shrift, trans. Fredric Jameson (SUNY Press, 1990), p. 114.
See Poetry and Experience, Wilhelm Dilthey Selected Works, Vol. V, eds. Rudolf A. Makkreel and Frithjof Rodi, trans. Joseph Ross (Princeton UP, 1985), p. 335.
See Sue-Ellen Case, “Tracking the Vampire,” Differences, vol. 5 (Summer 1991), p. 3.
See Emma Donoghue, Stir-fry (Penguin, 1995), p. 27. All subsequent references are to this edition.
See Tom Lennon, When Love Comes to Town (O’Brien, 1993), p. 82. All subsequent references are to this edition.
See Peggy Phelan’s Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (Routledge, 1993), p. 96.
See Gerry Smyth, The Novel and the Nation (Pluto, 1997), p. 161.
See Carole-Anne Tyler, “Passing: Narcissism, Identity, and Difference,” Differences, 6.23 (1994), p. 212.
See Marilyn R. Farwell, Heterosexual Plots and Lesbian Narratives (New York UP, 1996), pp. 99–100.
See Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Thousand Plateaux, trans. Brian Mas-sumi (U of Minnesota P, 1980) p. 308.
See Emma Donoghues Hood (Penguin, 1996), pp. 188–189. All subsequent references are to this edition.
See Walshes Introduction to Sex, Nation, and Dissent in Lrish Writing, p. 7. The quotation is from Jonathan Dollimore, “The Cultural Politics of Perversion,” Sexual Sameness, ed. Joseph Bristow (Routledge, 1992), p. 9.
See Adrienne Rich, Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence (Antelope, 1982), p. 14.
See Tom Lennon, Crazy Love (O’Brien, 1999), p. 51. All subsequent references are to this edition.
See Colm Toibin’s The Blackwater Lightship (Picador, 1999), p. 47. All subsequent references are to this edition.
See Patrick Hannon, “AIDS: Moral Issues,” Studies, vol. 79, no. 314 (Summer 1990), p. 109.
See Sue-Ellen Case, “Tracking the Vampire,” Differences, vol. 5 (Summer 1991), p. 3.
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© 2002 Jennifer M. Jeffers
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Jeffers, J.M. (2002). Bodies over the Boundary. In: The Irish Novel at the End of the Twentieth Century. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-09554-1_4
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