Introduction

Abstract

Surveying the most influential histories and theories of the Irish short story, this chapter argues that the Irish short story has traditionally been defined as a nationalist and realist genre that stages experiences of loss, loneliness and alienation. This dominant view was formed in the twentieth century by—and on the basis of—the work of such male writers as Moore, Joyce, O’Connor, O’Faoláin and O’Flaherty. Short stories of Irish women writers were only occasionally taken into account. In fact, this rather narrow view of the Irish short story served to further marginalize the work of women writers which was often judged to fall short of the norm. Hence, this normative view of the characteristics and history of the Irish short story needs to be opened up if we want to truly understand and value the short fiction of Irish women writers. A central hypothesis in this respect is that instead of investing in the Romantic myth of the outsider-as-hero, women writers have more often sought to raise questions of relations, family and community in their short fiction. A sustained attention to those thematic concerns, in tandem with an exploration of the formal characteristics of their short fiction, aims to demonstrate the crucial role they played in the development of the Irish short story from the 1880s to the present. The Introduction also elaborates on the meaning of the different keyterms of this study—the short story, women writers and Irish writers—and on the relations that exist between those terms.