Nels Pearson – författare

Taking up a neglected area in the study of the crime novel, this collection investigates the growing number of writers who adapt conventions of detective fiction to expose problems of law, ethics, and truth that arise in postcolonial and transnational communities. While detective fiction has been linked to imperialism and constructions of race from its earliest origins, recent developments signal the evolution of the genre into a potent framework for narrating the complexities of identity, citizenship, and justice in a postcolonial world. Among the authors considered are Vikram Chandra, Gabriel García Márquez, Michael Ondaatje, Patrick Chamoiseau, Mario Vargas Llosa, Suki Kim, and Walter Mosley. The essays explore detective stories set in Latin America, the Caribbean, India, and North America, including novels that view the American metropolis from the point of view of Asian American, African American, or Latino characters. Offering ten new and original essays by scholars in the field, this volume highlights the diverse employment of detective fictions internationally, and uncovers important political and historical subtexts of popular crime novels.

Looking at the writing of three significant Irish expatriates, Nels Pearson challenges conventional critical trends that view their work as either affirming Irish anti-colonial sentiment or embracing international identity. In reality, he argues, these writers constantly work back and forth between a sense of national belonging that remains incomplete and ideas of human universality tied to their new global environments. For these and many other Irish writers, national and international concerns do not conflict, but overlap—and the interplay between them motivates Irish modernism.According to Pearson, Joyce’s Ulysses strives to articulate the interdependence of an Irish identity and a universal perspective; Bowen’s exiled, unrooted characters are never firmly rooted in the first place; and in Beckett, the unsettled origin is felt most keenly when it is abandoned for exile. These writers demonstrate the displacement felt by many Irish citizens in an ever-changing homeland unsteadied by long and turbulent decolonization. Searching for a sense of place between national and global abstractions, their work displays a twofold struggle to pinpoint national identity while adapting to a fluid cosmopolitan world.

Looking at the writing of three Irish expatriates who lived in Trieste, London, and Paris, Nels Pearson challenges conventional critical trends that view their work as either affirming Irish anticolonial sentiment or embracing international identity. In reality, he argues, these writers work constantly back and forth between a sense of national belonging that remains incomplete and ideas of human universality tied to their new global environments. For these and many other Irish writers, national and international concerns do not conflict, but overlap—and the interplay between them motivates Irish modernism.Joyce’s Ulysses strives to articulate the interdependence of an Irish identity and a universal perspective. Bowen’s exiled, unrooted characters were never firmly rooted in the first place. And in Beckett, the unsettled origin is felt most keenly when it is abandoned for exile. These writers demonstrate the displacement felt by many Irish citizens in an ever-changing Ireland unsteadied by long and turbulent decolonization. Ultimately, their work displays a twofold struggle to pinpoint national identity while adapting to a fluid cosmopolitan world.

Donald J. Murphy Prize for a Distinguished First Book"Pearson is convincing in arguing that Irish writers often straddle the space between national identity and a sense of belonging to a larger, more cosmopolitan environment."--Choice"Demonstrat[es]. . .just what it is that makes comparative readings of history, politics, literature, theory, and culture indispensable to the work that defines what is best and most relevant about scholarship in the humanities today."--Modern Fiction Studies"[An] admirable book . . . Repositions the artistic subject as something different from the biographical Joyce, Bowen, or Beckett, cohering as a series of particular aesthetic responses to the dilemma of belonging in an Irish context."--James Joyce Broadsheet"A smart and compelling approach to Irish expatriate modernism. . . . An important new book that will have a lasting impact on postcolonial Irish studies."--Breac"Clearly written, convincingly argued, and transformative."--Nicholas Allen, author of Modernism, Ireland and Civil War"Goes beyond ''statism'' and postnationalism toward a cosmopolitics of Irish transnationalism in which national belonging and national identity are permanently in transition."--Gregory Castle, author of The Literary Theory Handbook"Shows how three important Irish writers crafted forms of cosmopolitan thinking that spring from, and illuminate, the painful realities of colonialism and anti-colonial struggle."--Marjorie Howes, author of Colonial Crossings: Figures in Irish Literary History"Asserting the simultaneity of national and global frames of reference, this illuminating book is a fascinating and timely contribution to Irish Modernist Studies."--Geraldine Higgins, author of Heroic Revivals from Carlyle to YeatsLooking at the writing of three significant Irish expatriates, Nels Pearson challenges conventional critical trends that view their work as either affirming Irish anti-colonial sentiment or embracing international identity. In reality, he argues, these writers constantly work back and forth between a sense of national belonging that remains incomplete and ideas of human universality tied to their new global environments. For these and many other Irish writers, national and international concerns do not conflict, but overlap--and the interplay between them motivates Irish modernism.According to Pearson, Joyce ''s Ulysses strives to articulate the interdependence of an Irish identity and a universal perspective; Bowen''s exiled, unrooted characters are never firmly rooted in the first place; and in Beckett, the unsettled origin is felt most keenly when it is abandoned for exile. These writers demonstrate the displacement felt by many Irish citizens in an ever-changing homeland unsteadied by long and turbulent decolonization. Searching for a sense of place between national and global abstractions, their work displays a twofold struggle to pinpoint national identity while adapting to a fluid cosmopolitan world.

Taking up a neglected area in the study of the crime novel, this collection investigates the growing number of writers who adapt conventions of detective fiction to expose problems of law, ethics, and truth that arise in postcolonial and transnational communities. While detective fiction has been linked to imperialism and constructions of race from its earliest origins, recent developments signal the evolution of the genre into a potent framework for narrating the complexities of identity, citizenship, and justice in a postcolonial world. Among the authors considered are Vikram Chandra, Gabriel García Márquez, Michael Ondaatje, Patrick Chamoiseau, Mario Vargas Llosa, Suki Kim, and Walter Mosley. The essays explore detective stories set in Latin America, the Caribbean, India, and North America, including novels that view the American metropolis from the point of view of Asian American, African American, or Latino characters. Offering ten new and original essays by scholars in the field, this volume highlights the diverse employment of detective fictions internationally, and uncovers important political and historical subtexts of popular crime novels.

Taking up a neglected area in the study of the crime novel, this collection investigates the growing number of writers who adapt conventions of detective fiction to expose problems of law, ethics, and truth that arise in postcolonial and transnational communities. While detective fiction has been linked to imperialism and constructions of race from its earliest origins, recent developments signal the evolution of the genre into a potent framework for narrating the complexities of identity, citizenship, and justice in a postcolonial world. Among the authors considered are Vikram Chandra, Gabriel García Márquez, Michael Ondaatje, Patrick Chamoiseau, Mario Vargas Llosa, Suki Kim, and Walter Mosley. The essays explore detective stories set in Latin America, the Caribbean, India, and North America, including novels that view the American metropolis from the point of view of Asian American, African American, or Latino characters. Offering ten new and original essays by scholars in the field, this volume highlights the diverse employment of detective fictions internationally, and uncovers important political and historical subtexts of popular crime novels.

Taking up a neglected area in the study of the crime novel, this collection investigates the growing number of writers who adapt conventions of detective fiction to expose problems of law, ethics, and truth that arise in postcolonial and transnational communities. While detective fiction has been linked to imperialism and constructions of race from its earliest origins, recent developments signal the evolution of the genre into a potent framework for narrating the complexities of identity, citizenship, and justice in a postcolonial world. Among the authors considered are Vikram Chandra, Gabriel García Márquez, Michael Ondaatje, Patrick Chamoiseau, Mario Vargas Llosa, Suki Kim, and Walter Mosley. The essays explore detective stories set in Latin America, the Caribbean, India, and North America, including novels that view the American metropolis from the point of view of Asian American, African American, or Latino characters. Offering ten new and original essays by scholars in the field, this volume highlights the diverse employment of detective fictions internationally, and uncovers important political and historical subtexts of popular crime novels.

By tracing maritime settings and contexts across modernist literature in Britain and Ireland, Maritime Modernism: Seas, Coasts and Islands in British and Irish Literature reveals new connections between the period’s key texts as well as evidence of how cultural and political relationships to water can differ significantly depending upon one’s vantage point. While writers across the archipelago employed coastal, nautical and oceanic imagery to challenge the narratives and cartographies of maritime-imperial Britain, authors in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales also differ in the ways they imagine the sea/land relationship, and its histories, against the backdrop of a devolving United Kingdom. Major authors such as Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, T.S. Eliot, James Joyce and W.B. Yeats are studied alongside less well-known writers such as Elizabeth Bowen, Lynette Roberts, David Jones, Neil Gunn and Claire Spencer.

By tracing maritime settings and contexts across modernist literature in Britain and Ireland, Maritime Modernism: Seas, Coasts and Islands in British and Irish Literature reveals new connections between the period’s key texts as well as evidence of how cultural and political relationships to water can differ significantly depending upon one’s vantage point. While writers across the archipelago employed coastal, nautical and oceanic imagery to challenge the narratives and cartographies of maritime-imperial Britain, authors in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales also differ in the ways they imagine the sea/land relationship, and its histories, against the backdrop of a devolving United Kingdom. Major authors such as Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, T.S. Eliot, James Joyce and W.B. Yeats are studied alongside less well-known writers such as Elizabeth Bowen, Lynette Roberts, David Jones, Neil Gunn and Claire Spencer.