John Banville and His Precursors

Pietra Palazzolo teaches at the Open University, UK and serves on the Executive Committe of the Centre for Myth Studies at the University of Essex, UK. She is co-editor of Translating Myth (2016).Michael Springer is an Independent Scholar and previously taught at the University of York, UK.Stephen Butler is Lecturer in the Department of English and History at Ulster University, UK.

John Banville and His Precursors includes a number of intellectual delights. ... [it] is the resounding evidence that reading Banville is a life-long pursuit and delight.

• ContributorsForewordAcknowledgementsIntroduction – Michael Springer, independent scholarPart one: National and transnational currents1. John Banville and the idea of the precursor: some meditations – Derek Hand, Dublin City University, Ireland2. Unknown unity: Ireland and Europe in Beckett and Banville – Peter Boxall, University of Sussex, UKPart two: Literary Engagements3. ‘The vain thing menaced by the touch of the real’: John Banville as a precursor to Henry James – Darren Borg, Los Angeles Pierce College, USA4. From Isabel Archer to Mrs Osmond: John Banville reinterprets Henry James – Elke D’hoker, University of Leuven, Belgium5. Afterlives of a supreme fiction: John Banville’s dialogue with Wallace Stevens – Pietra Palazzolo, The Open University, UK6. Effacing the subject: Banville, Kleist and a world without people – Rebecca Downes, independent scholar7. The limits of simile: Rilke, Stevens, and Banville’s scepticism – Michael Springer 8. John Banville and Hugo von Hofmannsthal: language, mundane revelation, and profane sacrality – Joakim Wrethed, Stockholm University, SwedenPart three: Philosophical, theoretical, and artistic forebears9. ‘A fool’s errand’: Blanchot, mourning, and The Sea – Karen McCarthy 10. Reading Banville with Lacan: hysteric aesthetics in The Book of Evidence – Mehdi Ghassemi, University of Lille, France11. Existential precursors and contemporaries in Banville’s Alex Cleave trilogy – Stephen Butler, Ulster University, Northern Ireland12. ‘an earthly glow’: Heidegger and the uncanny in Eclipse and The Sea – Michael Springer 13. John Banville’s ekphrastic experiments – Neil Murphy, Nanyang Technological University, SingaporeIndex