This book engages with ageing masculinities in Irish literature and visual culture, including fiction, drama, poetry, painting, and documentary. Exploring the shifting representations of older men from the early twentieth century to the present, the contributors analyse how a broad range of literary and visual texts construct, reinscribe, or challenge perceptions of older age. In doing so, they trace a shift from depictions of authority figures - often symbolising patriarchal dominance and oppression - to more nuanced, complex, and heterogeneous explorations of older men’s embodied subjectivities and vulnerabilities. Exploring artists and writers such as Seán Keating, J.M. Synge, Teresa Deevy, Marina Carr, Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, Derek Mahon, Kate O’Brien, John Banville, Colm Tóibín, Bernard MacLaverty, Mike McCormack, Anne Griffin, and Claire Keegan, the chapters in this book attend to the symbolic as well as social significance of older men in Irish cultural expression.
"Introduction: Ageing Masculinities in Irish Literature and Visual Culture Michaela Schrage-Früh and Tony Tracy DRAMA Taking the ""Black Stick"": Ageing Husbands and Fathers in the Plays of J. M. Synge and Teresa Deevy Mária Kurdi ""Are all the monks old men?"" Ageing and the Male Monastic Community in Brian Friel’s The Enemy Within Giovanna Tallone Father Ireland on Stage: Representations of Social Change and Ageing Masculinities in Crisis Ciara L. Murphy POETRY Poetics at the Limit: Embodiment, Masculinities, and Ageing in Samuel Beckett’s Early Poetry Collection Echo’s Bones Heike Hartung Masculinity, Ageing, and Midlife Crisis in the Poetry of Paul Muldoon and Paul Durcan Anne Karhio Not Sailing to Byzantium: Aged Masculinities and Latour’s Matters of Concern in the Late Works of Irish Male Poets Katarzyna Ostalska FICTION ""That the Youth May Throw Us Aside"": Fatherhood, Ageing Masculinities, and the Politics of Insecurity in Mid-Twentieth-Century Irish Fiction Loic Wright Stuck in the Old Times: A Male-character Analysis on Three Irish Novels Through Corpus Stylistics Cassandra S. Tully Uncanny Reflections: Older Widowers in John Banville’s The Sea, Sebastian Barry’s The Secret Scripture and Anne Griffin’s When All is Said Michaela Schrage-Früh ""Caught suddenly by the land shifting"": Ageing Masculinity and Rural Ireland in Recent Irish Short Fiction Orlaith Darling ""A bridge to nowhere"": Arrested Development, Trauma, Liminality, and the Ageing Irish Exile in Bernard MacLaverty’s Midwinter Break Clare Brannigan ""Shades of Masculinities"": Midlife and Caring Masculinity in Mike McCormack’s Solar Bones Brenda O’Connell Colm Tóibín and Henry James: Portrait of an Ageing Master Heather Ingman VISUAL CULTURE Seán Keating’s Ireland – the Land of Old Men Katarzyna Kociołek Ageing Masculinities and Irish Traditional Music on Screen Verena Commins and Méabh Ní Fhuartháin Changing the Picture: Older Men’s Responses to Media Representations of Ageing in an Irish Context Margaret O’Neill and Áine Ní Léime"
Michaela Schrage-Früh is lecturer in German at NUI Galway. She is the author of Emerging Identities: Myth, Nation and Gender in the Poetry of Eavan Boland, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Medbh McGuckian (2004) and Philosophy, Dreaming and the Literary Imagination (2016). She has authored numerous articles and co-edited several collections on representations of gender and ageing in literature and culture. Tony Tracy is lecturer in Film and Media Studies at NUI Galway. His research centres on film history and Irish cinema with a particular interest in masculinities. He has authored numerous articles and co-edited a number of collections including Irish Masculinity and Popular Culture: Tiger Tales (2014) and John Huston: Essays on a Restless Director (2010).
