Quite an Other Thing: Recent Texts in ‘Irish Queer Studies’Books Reviewed: Caroline Magennis and Raymond Mullen (eds). Irish Masculinities: Reflections on Literature and Culture. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2011. x+194 pages. £50.00 GBP.Aintzane Legaretta Mentxaka, Kate O'Brien and the Fiction of Identity: Sex, Art and Politics in Mary Lavelle and Other Writings. North Carolina and London: McFarland and Company Inc,

Abstract

This essay shall examine the relationship that exists between Irish studies and queer theory via a consideration of three recently published works, both academic and literary. The texts that shall be reviewed are: Eibhear Walshe's Oscar's Shadow: Wilde, Homosexuality and Modern Ireland, Aintzane Legarreta Mentxaka's Kate O'Brien and the Fiction of Identity: Sex, Art and Politics in Mary Lavelle and Other Writings, and the new collection of plays, edited by Fintan Walshe, entitled Queer Notions. The association between Irishness and otherness (a connection explicitly stated by Oscar Wilde) means that the shadow of queerness haunts Ireland and Irish studies. The works being examined in this essay illuminate some of the forms (among many) ‘queer Irish studies’ can take.