Description
Book SynopsisTales of child sacrifice, demon lovers, incestual relations, and returns from the dead are part of English and Irish gothic literature. This book shows how Anglo-Irish gothic works written from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries reflect the destructive effects of imperialism on the children.
Trade Review“A compelling history of the Anglo-Irish gothic tradition that is ambitious, convincing, and valuable.”—Mary Favret, Indiana University
“Backus’s fresh and unexpected insights into Irish Gothic texts along with the sophisticated and contemporary theoretical base of her argument should ensure this book an important place in Irish studies.”—Ann Owens Weekes, University of Arizona
“With extraordinary analytic clarity, Margot Backus sifts the troubling evidence of three centuries and offers valuable commentary on writings from Swift to Jennifer Johnston, from Edmund Burke to Frank McGuinness. This book resonates with grand ideas.”—Declan Kiberd, University College Dublin
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction
1 The Other Half of the Story: English and Irish Social Formations, 1550-1700
2 "Does she not deserve to Pay for All This?" Compulsory Romance in the Constricting Family Cell
3 "Something Valuable of Their Own": Children, Reporduction, and Irony in Swift, Burke, and Edgeworth
4 "A Very Strange Agony": Parables of Sexual Subject Formation in Melmoth the Wanderer, Carmilla, and Dracula
5 Irish Gothic Realism and the Great War: The Devil's bargain and the Demon Lover
6 Somebody Else's Troubles: Post-treaty Retrenchment and the (Burning) Big House Novel
7 "Perhaps I may Come Live": Mother Ireland and the Unfinished Revolution
Conclusion
Notes
BIbliography
Index
