Fitness for Freedom

Disability, Degeneration, and Modern Irish Writing

Marion Quirici

$162

Hardback

Forthcoming
Pre-Order now

QTY:

English

Syracuse University Press
01 November 2025

Literary studies: from c 1900 -; Disability: social aspects

Series: Irish Studies

Fitness for Freedom explores the legacy of intersectional stereotypes of disability, race, gender, sexuality, class, and religion that justified imperial rule in Ireland and the forms of oppression that continued after independence. Marion Quirici identifies models of citizenship and creative autonomy in Irish modernist literature that valorize vulnerability over ability and interdependence over independence. She uncovers a history in which an entire nation, Ireland, was characterized as disabled and therefore ""not fit for freedom."" Beyond symbolism, the Famine and decades of emigration led to a perception that Ireland’s racial stocks were depleted, and that those who remained were feeble and few.

The fraught relationship between disability and Irishness provides context for Quirici’s analysis of modernist Irish literature. Revivalists such as William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory, Pádraic Pearse, and the Gaelic Athletic Association created new mythologies of Irish ability to counter imperial stereotypes, tacitly reinforcing the idea of disability as a disqualification for sovereignty. Certain Irish modernists, however—James Joyce, Edna O’Brien, Samuel Beckett, Brian O’Nolan, and Christy Brown—called the ""fitness for freedom"" ideology into question. These authors allow us to disentangle disability from unfitness and scrutinize its relationship to liberation. In their work, disability becomes an avenue for exploring the human experience and discovering the inherent creativity and collaborative potential of an interdependent life.

By: Marion Quirici
Imprint: Syracuse University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 14mm
ISBN: 9780815611929
ISBN 10: 0815611927
Series: Irish Studies
Pages: 277
Publication Date: 01 November 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , College/higher education , Undergraduate , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Marion Quirici is an assistant professor of disability studies and global anglophone literature at Kennesaw State University. She has published in Pediatric Clinics of North America, Medical Humanities, Journal of Pediatric Rehabilitation Medicine, and Joyce Studies Annual, among other journals.

Reviews for Fitness for Freedom: Disability, Degeneration, and Modern Irish Writing

""This is an excellent contribution to the field of disability studies. Of course, it will appeal to those interested in Irish work; however, the writers within that arena occupy a variety of categories, especially writers like Joyce and Beckett."" - Marilyn Reizbaum, author of Unfit: Jewish Degeneration and Modernism ""A very rich and significant contribution to the ever-growing field of medical humanities in relationship to Ireland and to emergent studies of modernism and the body, as well as Irish literary modernism in general."" - Elizabeth Grubgeld, author of Disability and Life Writing in Post-Independence Ireland