The Best Are Leaving
Cambridge University Press, 3/31/2015
EAN 9781107680876, ISBN10: 1107680875
Paperback, 220 pages, 22.7 x 15.3 x 1.4 cm
Language: English
Clair Wills's The Best Are Leaving is an important and wide-ranging study of post-war Irish emigrant culture. Wills analyses representations of emigrants from Ireland and of Irish immigrants in Britain across a range of discourses, including official documents, sociological texts, clerical literature, journalism, drama, literary fiction, and popular literature and film. This book, written by a leading critic of Irish literature and culture, discusses topics such as the loss of the finest people from rural Ireland and the destruction of traditional communities; the anxieties of women emigrants and their desire for the benefits of modern consumer society; the stereotype of the drunken Irishman; the charming and authentic country Irish in the city; and the ambiguous meanings of Irish Catholicism in England, which was viewed as both a threatening and civilising force. Wills explores this theme of emigration through writers as diverse as M. J. Molloy, John B. Keane, Tom Murphy, and Edna O'Brien.
1. The best are leaving
fitness, marriage, and the crisis of the national family
2. Pink witch
women, modernity, and urbanisation
3. British paddies
realism and the Irish immigrant
4. The vanishing Irish
assimilation, ethnicisation, and literary caricature
5. Clay is the flesh
looking at manual labour.