The Construction Of Irish Identity In American Literature (Routledge Transnational Perspectives On American Literature),New

This book examines the development of literary constructions of IrishAmerican identity from the midnineteenth century arrival of the Famine generation through the Great Depression. It goes beyond an analysis of negative Irish stereotypes and shows how Irish characters became the site of intense cultural debate regarding American identity, with some writers imagining Irishness to be the antithesis of Americanness, but others suggesting Irishness to be a path to Americanization.This study emphasizes the importance of considering how a sense of Irishness was imagined by both IrishAmerican writers conscious of the process of selfdefinition as well as nonIrish writers responsive to shifting cultural concerns regarding ethnic others. It analyzes specific iconic IrishAmerican characters including Mark Twains Huck Finn and Margaret Mitchells Scarlet OHara, as well as lesserknown Irish monsters who lurked in the American imagination such as T.S. Eliots Sweeney and Frank Norris McTeague.As Dowd argues, in contemporary American society, Irishness has been largely absorbed into a homogenous white culture, and as a result, it has become a largely invisible ethnicity to many modern literary critics. Too often, they simply do not see Irishness or do not think it relevant, and as a result, many IrishAmerican characters have been deethnicized in the critical literature of the past century. This volume reestablishes the importance of Irish ethnicity to many characters that have come to be misread as generically white and shows how Irishness is integral to their stories.