Presents a study of some of Anglo-Ireland's most compelling twentieth-century attempts at self-representation. This book aims to contribute to the effort in Irish cultural studies to analyze myths and stereotypes that have been both symptom and cause of Irish troubles past and present, and helps to destabilize problematically binary terminologies.

This is a study of some of Anglo-Ireland's most compelling twentieth-century attempts at self-representation. In contrast to formative studies that read Anglo-Irish fiction as a predictably colonialist literature that nostalgically champions ruling-class culture, the author argues that novels by such authors as Molly Keane, Elizabeth Bowen, and Samuel Beckett are in fact richly textured narratives that sustain continuous debates with their own visions and revisions of history and culture. The book contributes to the ongoing effort in Irish cultural studies to analyze myths and stereotypes that have been both symptom and cause of Irish troubles past and present, and helps destabilize problematically binary terminologies; toward which discourse about postcoloniality can tend. In the process, the author refines received ideas about literary modernism and post-modernism, and suggests failings in the prevailing theory and practice of ideology critique. Ellen M. Wolff is Eleanor Gwin Ellis Instructor in English at Phillips Exeter Academy.