Aigne
Books available for review
All reviews should follow the Harvard style of referencing. They should be between 750 and 1000 words. Reviewers have one month to submit their review.
Contact Emilie Peneau at aigneucc@gmail.com if you would like to review one of these books. You can also contact me if you would like to review a recently published book not listed here and I will try to obtain a copy for you.
Crowley, P., Humble, N. and Ross S. eds, 2011. Mediterranean Travels: Writing Self and Other from the Ancient World to Contemporary Society. Oxford: Legenda. Hardback, 256pp, ISBN-13: 9781907975073, £45.
“Across time the Mediterranean has been a zone of variable intensities, alliances and tensions: it is where the continents of Europe, Africa and Asia meet, it is where North faces South in an asymmetrical relationship. Its histories–of Greece and Rome, of Christianity and Islam, of modernity and tradition–have evolved through exploration, trade, pilgrimage, imperial expansion, imaginings, vacation and migration. Travellers to this compelling region have recorded their journeys and their encounters with the Other in a variety of modes that have also revealed as much about themselves. Written by leading scholars in the field, this collection analyzes the notion of travel writing as a genre, while tracing significant examples of Mediterranean travel writing that return us to Ancient Greece, to Medieval pilgrimages, to Venetians’ diplomatic missions, to an Egyptian’s account of Paris in the nineteenth century, to French artistic journeys in North Africa and to contemporary narratives of privileged resettlement, death, and dislocation.” (from the Legenda website).
Status: Not available.
Walsh, A. L., 2011. Chaos and Coincidence in Contemporary Spanish Fiction. Bern: Lang. Paperback, 162pp., ISBN 978-3-0343-1018-5, €35.70.
“This book is an investigation of contemporary Spanish fiction, specifically a group of fictional texts (written and film) that appeared in Spain in the first decade of this century (2001- 2010). The author focuses on textual analysis and studies how chaos and coincidence appear in these narratives and shape them. The texts analyzed are Soldados de Salamina (2001) by Javier Cercas, Tu rostro manaña (2002-2007) by Javier Marías, La catedral del mar (2006) by Ildefonso Falcones, Volver (2006) directed by Pedro Almodóvar, Instrucciones para salvar el mundo (2008) by Rosa Montero and El asedio (2010) by Arturo Pérez-Reverte, with reference to other texts by these authors also included. Though very different storytellers, these authors share an interest in chaos as a theme and as a narrative device. This work shows that the recurrence in their stories of the theme of chaos indicates a move away from postmodern apathy to a growing sense of empowerment, both for characters and for their readers.” (From the Peter Lang website)
Status: available.
Walshe, E., 2011. Oscar’s Shadow: Wilde, Homosexuality and Modern Ireland. Cork: CUP. Hardback, 232 pp., ISBN 9781859184837, €39.
“Oscar Wilde was the most famous gay Irishman and Oscar’s Shadow deals with Wilde and his homosexuality within the context of Ireland and of Irish cultural perceptions of his sexuality. The book investigates the questions: What was ‘Oscar’s shadow’, his influence on twentieth and twenty-first century Irish culture and literature? What has Oscar Wilde meant to Ireland from his disgrace in May 1895 up to the present?
Walshe presents Oscar’s shadow in Ireland from 1895 to the present, using contemporary Irish newspaper reports of the Wilde trials of 1895, previously unpublished archival material, and a significant body of Irish critical studies, biographies and dramatisations of Wilde’s life and sexuality. If perceptions of sexual identity evolve partly through public events, how then did Irish media and literary sources configure Wilde’s homosexuality during the Wilde trials and after? Wilde’s homosexuality was a contested discourse within twentieth-century Ireland, a discourse that became interconnected with Irish cultural nationalism. Thus Wilde became a weathervane for the rare but contentious discussions of homosexuality in Ireland, and his life and his writings usefully intertwine within these debates. Oscar’s Shadow sets the historical context for cultural and legal perceptions of homosexuality in Ireland.
This book is the first study of the formation of the idea of homosexuality in Ireland into the twentieth century and centres on an account of Wilde’s visible presence as sexual ‘other’, analysing the strategies of normalisation used to police his unnameable sin within Irish media and literary accounts. Walshe argues that Wilde in Irish culture was perceived not so much as Oscar Wilde the unspeakable but much more as Oscar Wilde the dissident Irishman. Wilde, famous for his writings and notorious for his sexuality, is central for perceptions of homosexuality in modern Ireland
Eibhear Walshe is a senior lecturer in the Department of Modern English at University College Cork. He is the editor of Ordinary People Dancing: Essays on Kate O’Brien (Cork University Press, 1993), Sex, Nation and Dissent, (Cork University Press, 1997), Elizabeth Bowen’s Selected Irish Writings (2011).” (From Cork University Press website)
Status: available
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