The Edinburgh Companion to Irish Modernism

The Edinburgh Companion to Irish Modernism showcases cutting-edge developments in Irish and modernist studies. Extending the timeline of modernism, the Companion reaches back to the Irish Literary Revival of the late nineteenth century and forward to recent innovations in the arts. The Companion also calls for a more inclusive understanding of Irish modernism, drawing greater attention, for example, to the pioneering work of women and prompting a richer awareness of 'gender trouble' in the long twentieth century. It departs from other handbooks and critical anthologies by highlighting the ‘heresies’ of Irish modernism, its trademark modes of resistance to orthodoxy and tradition. Among those modes, the Companion identifies ‘heresies of time and space’, ‘heresies of nationalism’, ‘aesthetic heresies’, and ‘heresies of gender and sexuality’ as the organising rubrics for each section of the volume, concluding with ‘critical heresies’ that have reshaped the academic field. Under these five rubrics, contributors address a wide range of modernist achievements in drama, poetry, fiction, cinema, journalism, decorative arts, and philately, while the introduction offers pointers for further exploration of Irish music, painting, and architecture, accompanied by photographic reproductions. Granting that heresies often overlap, the chapters are organized to reflect their respective emphases, with the proviso that heresies are defined by their impurity, as well as by the orthodoxies they betray—the word ‘betray’ implying both transgression and revelation.