Modern Terror: Space and Violence in British and Irish Fictions 1883-1922
Sarah K. McLemore
English, UC Santa Barbara
Abstract:
My project examines textual and pictorial representations of the Fenian Dynamite War in
London and the Anglo-Irish War in Dublin. In the chapter I will present at the
dissertation seminar I focus on writers and artists documenting instances of architectural
destruction in Dublin such as the burning of the Custom House and bombings of
tenement flats. I also discuss representations of changes to Dublin’s cityscape such as the
imposition of check-points, the building of new fences and barricades, and the presence
of tanks and convoys of soldiers within the city. Consequently, I suggest that the desire
to represent Dublin’s besiegement allegorically signifies the destabilization of Dublin as
a modern, post-colonial state center and national home.
Primary Texts:
Collins, Michael. The Path to Freedom. Boulder, CO: Roberts Rinehart: 1996.
Joyce, James. Ulysses. New York: Vintage, 1986.
Markievicz, Constance Georgina. Prison Letters and Poems with a preface by Eamon de
Valera. London: Longmans, Green and Co, 1934.
O’Casey, Sean. Three Dublin Plays: The Shadow of a Gunman, Juno and the Paycock,
The Plough and the Stars. London: Faber and Faber, 1988.
Yeats, William Butler. The Collected Poems. New York: Scribner, 1989. (Especially
Meditations in a Time of Civil War (contained within The Tower first published in 1928),
The Wild Swans at Coole (1919), and Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921).
Political writings of Eamon de Valera, David Lloyd George, etc. from collections at the
Public Records Office of Northern Ireland, the National Library of Ireland and the State
Paper Office, Dublin Castle.
Secondary Texts/Criticism Related to the Project:
Benjamin, Walter. Reflections (especially essays such as “Critique of Violence.”). Ed
Peter Demet. New York: Schocken, 1978.
----------Illuminations (especially essays such as “Theses on the Philosophy of History.”)
Ed. Hannah Arendt. New York: Schocken, 1968.
Berman, Marshall. All That is Solid Melts into Air. New York: Penguin, 1988.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical
Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2000.
Chattopadhyay, Swati. Representing Calcutta: Modernity, Nationalism, and the Colonial
Uncanny. Routledge.
Cleary, Joe. Literature, Partition and the Nation State: Culture and Conflict in Ireland,
Israel and Palestine. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002.
de Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 1988.
Duffy, Enda. The Subaltern Ulysses. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1994.
Feldman, Allen. Formations of Violence: The Narrative of the Body and Political
Terror in Northern Ireland. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.
Godlweska, A. and Smith, N [eds]. Geography and Empire. Oxford: Blackwell 1994.
Graham, Paul. Troubled Land: The Social Landscape of Northern Ireland. London:
Grey Editions, 1987.
Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. New York: International,
1971. (Especially “Notes on Italian History” and “Hegemony, Relations of Force,
Historical Bloc”)
Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity. Oxford: Blackwell, 1989.
------The Urban Experience. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 1992.
Houen, Alex. Terrorism and Modern Literature from Joseph Conrad to Ciaran Carson.
Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002.
Richard Kearney. Postnationalist Ireland: Politics, Culture, Philosophy. New York:
Routledge,1997.
Lefebvre, Henry. The Production of Space. London: Blackwell, 1991.
Lloyd, David. Anomolous States: Irish Writing and the Post-Colonial Moment. Durham:
Duke UP, 1993.
-------Ireland After History. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999.
Sorel, Georges. Reflections on Violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Taussig, Michael. The Nervous System. New York: Routledge, 1992.
Vidler, Anthony. The Architectural Uncanny: Essays in the Modern Unhomely.
London: MIT Press, 1992.