Space and the Irish Cultural Imagination

GERRY SMYTH is Senior Lecturer in Cultural History at Liverpool John Moores University. He is author of The Novel and the Nation: Studies in the New Irish Fiction and Decolonisation and Criticism: The Construction of Irish Literature. The latter was awarded the Michael J. Durkan Prize for the best book in Irish literature/culture by the American Conference for Irish Studies.

'In this book, Gerry Smyth revises the conventional discussions of time and place, history and geography in Irish writing by elaborating this subtle and adventurous exploration of Bachelardian space. This innovatory approach lends light and depth to his critique of Irish cultural history and opens possibilities for a reformulation of the ways in which the interrelations between history and literature have been understood.' - Seamus Deane, Notre Dame University, Illinois 'Over the last decade, the celebrated Irish obsession with place seems to have shifted into a concern with space. Fuelled by the greater mobility of the population, in and out of Ireland, a new attention to the Irish 'diaspora', and by the economic prosperity that has recast Irish relations to global affairs, this concern with space speaks to a significant transformation in Irish cultural sensibilities. This phenomenon is evident in literature, film, music and in vernacular culture...This book surely makes a vital contribution to the 'cognitive mapping' of Ireland in the new century.' - David Lloyd, Scripps University, California

• List of Abbreviations Aphorisms and Definitions Preface Acknowledgements Irish Cultural Studies and the Re-emergence of Spatial Analysis Space and the Irish Cultural Imagination The Location of Criticism, or, Putting the 'I' into Ireland Big Mistakes in Small Places: Internal and External Space in Seamus Deane's Reading in the Dark Show Me the Way to Go Home: Space and Place in the Music of U2 Notes Bibliography Index