Recovering Memory: Irish Representations of Past and Present
Editor: Hedda Friberg, Irene Gilsenan Nordin and Lene Yding Pedersen
Date Of Publication: Apr 2007
Isbn13: 9781847181473
Isbn: 1-84718-147-3
Various ways of collecting, storing and recovering memories have been the focus of the most recent joint research project carried out by a group of Irish Studies scholars, all based in the Nordic countries and members of the Nordic Irish Studies Network (NISN). The result of the project, Recovering Memory: Irish Representations of Past and Present, is a collection of essays which examines the theme of memory in Irish literature and culture against the theoretical background of the philosophical discourse of modernity. Offering a wide range of perspectives, this volume examines a plurality of representations—past and present—of memory, both public and private, and the intersection between collective memory and individual in modern Ireland. Also explored is the relation between memory and identity—national and private—as well as questions of subjectivity and the construction of the self. Given Ireland’s tragic past and its long history of colonisation, it is inevitable that various aspects of memory in terms of nationality, post-colonialism, and politics also have bearing on this study.

The volume is divided into five sections, each of which examines one broadly defined aspect of memory. The introductory section focuses on memory and history, and is followed by sections on memory and autobiography, place, identity, and memory in the work of novelist John Banville. Within each section, the individual writers engage in a fruitful dialogue with each other and with the approaches of such theorists as Arendt, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur, and Baudrillard.

Hedda Friberg is Senior Lecturer in English at Mid Sweden University, Härnösand, Sweden. Among her recent publications are “‘In the Murky Sea of Memory’: Memory’s Miscues in John Banville’s The Sea” in An Sionnach 1.2. (2005) and an article on Banville’s Eclipse and Shroud in the Irish University Review special issue on Banville (June 2006). A monograph tentatively entitled “The Fleetingly Real in John Banville’s Recent Work” is in the making.

Irene Gilsenan Nordin is Senior Lecturer in English at Dalarna University College, Sweden. She is director of DUCIS, Dalarna University Centre for Irish Studies, and editor of NIS (Nordic Irish Studies). Her most recent books are Re-Mapping Exile (Aarhus University Press, 2005) and The Body and Desire in Contemporary Irish Poetry (Irish Academic Press, 2006) and she is currently completing a monograph entitled The Element of the Spiritual in the Poetry of Eiléan Ni Chuilleanáin for Mellen Press.

Lene Yding Pedersen is a Senior Lecturer in English at Aalborg University, Denmark. Her research focuses on contemporary literature and culture of the English-speaking world, and her publications include articles on cultural text studies, narrative theory, and Irish literature. Among her recent publications are “Atlanticized: Joseph O’Connor’s America” in Cultural Text Studies 2: Transatlantic (Aalborg University Press, 2006) and “Colliding Words: Banville’s Art Trilogy” in Literature and Visual Culture (University of Iceland Press, 2005).

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