Description
Book SynopsisThis invigorating volume explores the literary worlds inhabited by the pioneering Irish author George Moore (1852–1933). With an eye to Moore’s innovative embrace of visual art, feminism and literary history, and in the spirit of his feisty resistance to ‘orthodoxy’, it investigates his influences and inventive strategies in novel, short story and memoir. Amongst the names emerging from the disparate spheres of impressionism, literary coteries, the paratextual and the music world are those of Manet, Mallarmé, Wilde, Héloïse, Elgar and Bourdieu, all with Moorian links. Contested depictions of religion and nationalism simmer; France and French influences encompass fin-de-siècle stories and medieval texts; epistolary details evidence vital parental support; contemporary authors write back to Moore. These voyages of discovery enter the fields of feminist scholarship and the New Woman, life writing and letters, fin-de-siècle aesthetics, intersections between art, music and literature, and literary transitions from Victorian to Modern. Valuably, the authors suggest numerous opportunities for additional research in these areas, as well as within Moore studies. This collection, with contributions from an international set of established and new scholars, delivers fresh and original findings as it builds on the substantial and ever-growing corpus of Moore studies.
Trade Review‘This collection conveys the spirit of an active scholarly community. Moore’s relationship with women excites a frenzy of attention – a complex case, and interesting to clarify. Often, a contributor spots George Moore in a contemporary’s writing, or notices how a motif from Moore is countered in a work by a contemporary. Overall, a fascinating fusion of scholarship, truly international.’ Adrian Frazier, Professor Emeritus at the University of Galway and author of George Moore: 1852–1933
Table of ContentsIntroduction
I. Artistic Influences and Approaches
The French Artist as Father, Muse and Rival in Memoirs of My Dead Life
Ann Heilmann
“Superfluous” Irish Gentry: Moore and Turgenev
Márta Pellérdi
Literature, Music, Art and the Salon: George Moore’s Perennial Courting of Creativity
Mary Pierse
The Prefaces of George Moore: Enigma Variations
Kathi R. Griffin
II. Cherchez la Femme?
Sphinxes without Secrets: Oscar Wilde, George Moore and the Woman Question
Nathalie Saudo Welby
George Moore, London ‘Literary Ladies’, Networks, and New Artistic Impulses
Kathryn Laing
The “Puzzle” of Gladys Parrish’s Carfrae’s Comedy and George Moore’s Evelyn Innes: Some Intertextual Connections
Brendan Fleming
III. France: Fiction and Letters
Between France and Ireland: How George Moore and Helen Waddell used Héloïse and Abélard
George Hughes
A French Train of Thought in ‘Two Men, a Railway Story’: From Impressionism to Expressionism
Michel Brunet
Epistolary Truths: ‘How one runs to ones mother when in trouble’
Maggie Breslin
IV. Politics, Religion and Nationality
George Moore and Decadent Catholicism: a Case Study of Evelyn Innes
Claire Masurel Murray
George Moore’s Irish Catholic Characters With ‘English’ Names
David Clare
Appropriating George Moore: J.O. Hannay’s The Seething Pot
Conor Montague
