Irish Studies After the Renaissance

Abstract

Graham, Colin. 2001. Deconstructing Ireland: Identity, Theory, Culture. New York: Columbia University Press. $67.00 he. $26.00 sc. xiii + 189 pp.Valente, Joseph. 2002. Dmcula's Crypt: Bram Stoker, Irishness, and Question of Blood. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. $29.95 he. xi + 173 pp.In recent years, Studies has developed significantly a field in which literary theory has offered helpful new readings of canonical texts well foregrounded works of writers who might not previously have been widely studied. Feminist theory and postcolonial theory in particular have been applied usefully to study of culture and literature, and some of these texts have become definitive sources in field: Elizabeth Butler Cullingford's Gender and History in Yeats's Love Poetry (1996), Declan Kiberd's Inventing Ireland: The Literature of Modem Nation (1995) and David Lloyd's Anomalous States: Writing and Post-Colonial Moment (1993), to name a few, have shaped contemporary readings of literature and influenced scholarship of several generations of Studies academics. The revitali/ation of field that can be attributed to these and other contemporary texts seemed to lose momentum at end of decade and, although field has remained vibrant, Studies scholars continue to unpack work of these critics. Rather than indicting current scholarship, however, this trend demonstrates vast applicability of work of that generation of scholars, particularly those who argued that postcolonial theory is a useful and relevant means of approaching study of culture and literature. As feminist and postcolonial readings offered new lenses through which to read texts, study of canonical works, especially those of Joyce and Yeats, became more challenging new ways to reread seemed to have been nearly exhausted. Consequently, Joseph Valente has a very difficult task in presenting a new reading of Dracula in his Dracula's Crypt: Bram Stoker, Irishness, and Question of Blood. To reread a text that has been deconstructed and read feminist, anti-feminist, colonial, postcolonial, nationalist, antinationalist and Marxist, Valente must grind a new lens. Using a foundational concept fact that, a result of 1800 Act of Union, Ireland ceased to be a distinct if colonized geopolitical entity and assumed unique and contradictory position of a or 'metropolitan' colony(2002, 3),Valente reads Dracula a text shaped by its means of production, arguing that, rather than being read Irish, Celtic, Anglo-Saxon or subaltern, the Irishness of Dracula should be read and understood in light of what I call its metrocolonial conditions of production, which function at both collective level, shaping cultural and political identity of people, and at individual level, giving a peculiar slant to psychic terrain of Stoker himself This notion of metrocolonial is defined not only in relation to Ireland's unique status a domestic and metropolitan colony but also to role of Ireland participant-victim in imperial enterprise (3). Working with concept of Ireland's unique colonial status, Valente examines intricacies of Stoker's interethnic Anglo-Celtic identity and how it affects text. Though readings of Stoker's hybrid cultural identity have abounded in studies of novel, Valente coins a term that offers a semantically fresh concept.The of is one familiar approach to Dracula, andValente's slant is that question of blood represents not merely Victorian fear of racial mixing but a critique of racialist paranoia(2002, 5). To clarify this subtle distinction, he argues that traditional Irish reading of text has focused on pollution of race, whereas a more nuanced explication of text identifies villain of novel as racialized anxiety itself (5). …