Book contents
- The Irish Expatriate Novel in Late Capitalist Globalization
- Cambridge Studies in Twenty-First-Century Literature and Culture
- The Irish Expatriate Novel in Late Capitalist Globalization
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction Revaluations of Irish Expatriate Fiction
- Chapter One After America
- Chapter Two Between Byzantium and Beijing
- Chapter Three Monstrous Modernity of the Global South
- Chapter Four Elusive Europes
- Conclusion The Weight of the World
- Notes
- Index
Chapter Four - Elusive Europes
New Futures, Old Traumas?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 October 2021
- The Irish Expatriate Novel in Late Capitalist Globalization
- Cambridge Studies in Twenty-First-Century Literature and Culture
- The Irish Expatriate Novel in Late Capitalist Globalization
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction Revaluations of Irish Expatriate Fiction
- Chapter One After America
- Chapter Two Between Byzantium and Beijing
- Chapter Three Monstrous Modernity of the Global South
- Chapter Four Elusive Europes
- Conclusion The Weight of the World
- Notes
- Index
Summary
The European Union has reshaped Irish society over the past half-century, yet in Irish fiction Europe typically appears as a site of aesthetic discovery or historical trauma rather than as immediate political reality. Contemporary Irish writing belongs more to an Anglo-American than to a European literary sphere, and Irish novels in Europe often ponder the ‘Americanization’ of European and Irish modernity. Aidan Higgins’s Balcony of Europe and Deirdre Madden’s Remembering Light and Stone depict Irish expatriates exploring what it means to live between Europe and the United States. In both narratives, the protagonists are romantically involved with Americans and attached to European landscapes, yet neither émigré finds some sustaining new local or supranational sociopolitical form beyond the nation-state.
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- The Irish Expatriate Novel in Late Capitalist Globalization , pp. 170 - 203Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021