The Irish Novel at the End of the Twentieth Century: Gender, Bodies and Power

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This text interprets a wide variety of Irish novels of the 1990s from a perspective that focuses on the regulated sexual and constructed gendered body. The performing body in these novels is linked to a grid of power that is partly pre-established and partly rapidly changing in contemporary Ireland. The body is set against this grid: some bodies move inside the familiar boundaries of sexuality, gender and culture and some bodies do not or cannot. The demarcating line of identity can be gauged at the basic level of sexual and gender identity in contrast to, or in alliance with political, social, religious or cultural norms. Jeffer’s examination of these novels reveals that Irish identity is in large part a matter of economics (replacing the traditional politics). Through a charting of movement of bodies we begin to see the thought-provoking, difference, and even seemingly bizarre realm of bodies in space presented in the Irish novel.