The Literature of Northern Ireland

Through close readings of texts by playwright Anne Devlin, poet Medbh McGuckian, and novelist Anna Burns, this book examines the ways Irish cultural production has been disturbed by partition. Ruprecht Fadem argues that literary texts address this tension through spectral, bordered metaphors and juxtapositions of the ancient and the contemporary.

Introduction 1. "Au contraire": The Spectral Borderlands of Northern Irish Literature 2. Self-Contradiction in a Small Place: Anne Devlin's "Other at the Edge of Life" 3. Outlining Silence in the Poetry of Medbh McGuckian 4. Specter and Doubt in Anna Burns' No Bones