Irish Modernism and the Global Primitive

Through essays written by established and younger scholars, Irish Modernism and the Global Primitive examines the ways a variety of modern Irish writers exploited or surrendered to primitivism and examines the intersection of Irish Modernism and the global rhetoric of the primitive encounter. The twelve essays in this collection focus critical attention on the broader study of global primitive alterities, especially from Africa, from the East, and on extreme representations of "indigenous others" from the New World. Contributors demonstrate how primitivism functions variously as an idealized nostalgia for the past, as a threat of the foreign, or as a potential representation of difference and connection. This collection addresses the ways Ireland's past primitive heritage regularly, though ironically, moves into the Irish present. Book jacket.

Maria McGarrity is Associate Professor of English, Long Island University.Claire A. Culleton is Professor of Modern British and Irish Literature, Kent State University.