Edinburgh University Press The Dandy in Irish and American Southern Fiction: Aristocratic Drag (Edinburgh Studies in Transatlantic Literature)

This book identifies and interprets the longstanding ideological and aesthetic dialogue between the literary imaginations of Anglo-Ireland and the Anglo-American South. It offers a rich comparative examination of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Irish and American Southern plantation literatures and their respective representations of race and nation, gender and sexuality, region and landscape, and the gothic imagination. Pairing major writers from both traditions, including Maria Edgeworth, William Faulkner, Oscar Wilde, Katherine Anne Porter and Elizabeth Bowen, the book shows how this transatlantic dialogue coalesced around questions of power, supremacy, and gentility: writers in Anglo-Irish and Anglo-Southern literary traditions recognized and spoke to each other through the discourse of aristocracy. As the book demonstrates, from the early nineteenth-century onwards, Irish and Anglo-Southern writers conducted a sustained exploration into constructions of aristocracy through the figure of the dissipated, deviant gentleman (or lady): the dandy. By augmenting literary analysis with a variety of historical, biographical, archival and visual materials, including nineteenth-century trade cards, original letters, and twentieth-century photographic portraits, the book offers readers a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary illumination of transatlantic modernism. Review Crowell recuperates a transatlantic cultural heritage about which too little has been written ... [An] engaging and historically astute study.-- "SEL - Studies in English Literature 1500-1900" This is a lively and nuanced account of a fascinating subject. Crowell's readings span topics from the female dandy, to decadence, to the politics of class, nationality, race and gender, offering a fresh perspective on these canonical and lesser known texts.--Emma Sutton, School of English, The University of St Andrews From the Back Cover The Dandy in Irish and American Southern Fiction: Aristocratic Drag Ellen Crowell This is a lively and nuanced account of a fascinating subject. Crowell's readings span topics from the female dandy, to decadence, to the politics of class, nationality, race and gender, offering a fresh perspective on these canonical and lesser known texts." Emma Sutton, School of English, The University of St Andrews This book identifies and interprets the longstanding ideological and aesthetic dialogue between the literary imaginations of Anglo-Ireland and the Anglo-American South. It offers a rich comparative examination of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Irish and American Southern plantation literatures and their respective representations of race and nation, gender and sexuality, region and landscape, and the gothic imagination. Pairing major writers from both traditions, including Maria Edgeworth, William Faulkner, Oscar Wilde, Katherine Anne Porter and Elizabeth Bowen, the book shows how this transatlantic dialogue coalesced around questions of power, supremacy, and gentility: writers in Anglo-Irish and Anglo-Southern literary traditions recognized and spoke to each other through the discourse of aristocracy. As the book demonstrates, from the early nineteenth-century onwards, Irish and Anglo-Southern writers conducted a sustained exploration into constructions of aristocracy through the figure of the dissipated, deviant gentleman (or lady): the dandy. By augmenting literary analysis with a variety of historical, biographical, archival and visual materials, including nineteenth-century trade cards, original letters, and twentieth-century photographic portraits, the book offers readers a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary illumination of transatlantic modernism. About the Author Ellen Crowell is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at St Louis University