Description
Book SynopsisArgues that modern Irish history encompasses a deep-seated fear of betrayal, and that this fear has been especially prevalent throughout Irish society since the revolutionary period at the outset of the twentieth century. -- .
Trade Review'The Judas Kiss charts a surprising path through Irish literature, but on every page its insights compel assent. That is the proof of criticism of a very high order.'
David Lloyd, Distinguished Professor of English, University of California
'Readers can't fail to be surprised, even astonished, by the mother lode of meaning and implication Gerry Smyth uncovers in The Judas kiss. The inflections of betrayal, treachery and infidelity he finds in modern Irish fiction, and by both implication and explication in Irish society, are shockingly numerous. Betrayal accompanies human nature and Christian culture, but is also potently Irish in its fictional and cultural incidence. The book cuts a broader literary swathe than its six subject novelists would suggest, and its critical imprint may well prove indelible.'
John Wilson Foster, author of Irish Novels 1890–1940: New Bearings in Culture and Fiction (2008)
‘[…] the greatest compliment that one can pay a book: that it opens the way to further thinking. I certainly hope that this book initiates the kind of wide-scale reconsideration of the role of betrayal in Irish culture (and beyond), the potential richness of which Smyth proves in Judas Kiss.’
James Alexander Fraser, Modernism/modernity, Volume 23, Number 1, January 2016
‘[…] a thought provoking and astute work of criticism which uncovers a sharp anxiety about loyalty that troubles the roots of Irishness in fiction and in fact.’
Edna Duffy, The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, Vol. 41
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Table of ContentsIntroduction: Betrayal and the Irish Novel
Part I
1. A short history of betrayal
2. Déirdre and the Sons of Usnach: a case study in Irish betrayal
Part II
3. ‘Trust not appearances’ – James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922)
4. the landscape of betrayal – Liam O’Flaherty’s The Informer (1925)
5. a spy in the house of love– Elizabeth Bowen’s The Heat of the Day (1949)
6. Jesus or Judas? – Francis Stuart’s Black List, Section H (1971)
7. ‘Cangled both to treachery’ – Eugene McCabe’s Death and Nightingales (1993)
8. ‘A family – a whole fucking country – drowning in shame’ – Anne Enright’s The Gathering (2007)
Index
