Synopses & Reviews
This study offers an extended study of the social and cultural legacies of state division in Ireland and Palestine. Focusing on the period since the 1960s, when the original partition settlements in each region were challenged by Irish and Palestinian nationalists, Joe Cleary's book contains individual chapters on nationalism and self-determination; on the construction of national literatures in the wake of state division; and on influential Irish, Israeli and Palestinian writers, film-makers and public intellectuals.
Review
"Stylish and elegant. Cleary's book offers innovative and compelling analysis of the political, cultural and intellectual struggles that have issued from the colonial partitions of Ireland and Palestine. Working in the best traditions of postcolonial scholarship, Cleary locates the political and cultural struggles in Ireland and Palestine in a wide and mutually illuminating comparative context without scanting the specificity of individual situations. A remarkably powerful and original piece of work, this book will undoubtedly be read widely, and is sure to contribute to the growing scholarly interest in the problematic legacies of partition." Edward Said"This book is strikingly original. It compares the effects of different partitions--in Ireland, Palestine and Germany--as they exhibit themselves in literature especially. Joe Cleary restores to literary analysis cultural and political dimensions that it had lost. This is a groundbreaking book by a remarkably gifted and powerful writer. It should be read by anyone interested in politics, history or literature and their interrelations." Semus Deane"Stylish and elegant. Cleary's book offers innovative and compelling analysis of the political, cultural and intellectual struggles that have issued from the colonial partitions of Ireland and Palestine. Working in the best traditions of postcolonial scholarship, Cleary locates the political and cultural struggles in Ireland and Palestine in a wide and mutually illuminating comparative context without scanting the specificity of individual situations. A remarkably powerful and original piece of work, this book will undoubtedly be read widely, and is sure to contribute to the growing scholarly interest in the problematic legacies of partition." Edward Said"This book is strikingly original. It compares the effects of different partitions--in Ireland, Palestine and Germany--as they exhibit themselves in literature especially. Joe Cleary restores to literary analysis cultural and political dimensions that it had lost. This is a groundbreaking book by a remarkably gifted and powerful writer. It should be read by anyone interested in politics, history or literature and their interrelations." Semus Deane
Synopsis
This study offers an extended study of the social and cultural legacies of state division in Ireland and Palestine. Focusing on the period since the 1960s, when the original partition settlements in each region were challenged by Irish and Palestinian nationalists, Joe Cleary's book contains individual chapters on nationalism and self-determination; on the construction of national literatures in the wake of state division; and on influential Irish, Israeli and Palestinian writers, film-makers and public intellectuals.
About the Author
Joe Cleary is Lecturer in English at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth where he teaches Colonial and Postcolonial Literature, Literary Theory, and Renaissance Drama. He has published widely on Irish literature and film and on contemporary political and cultural theory in books and journals such as The South Atlantic Quarterly and Textual Practice.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments; Preface; Part I: 1. Ireland, Palestine and the antinomies of self-determination in the 'Badlands of Modernity'; 2. Estranged states: national literatures, modernity and tradition, and the elaboration of partitionist identities; Part II: 3. 'Forked-Tongued on the Border Pitt': partition and the politics of form in contemporary narratives of the Northern Irish conflict; 4. Agonies of the potentates: journeys to the frontier in the novels of Amos Oz; 5. The meaning of disaster: the novel and the stateless nation in Ghassan Kanafani's Men in the Sun.