Most practitioners of gender or queer theory must still defend the legitimacy of their ideas when dealing with Irish literature. The contributors of these 15 essays make ample use of such
theories without apology as they examine Irish literature in terms of gender, sexuality and corporeality, exposing hidden elements of Irishness. They analyze the maternal threshold of
subjectivity in the poetry of McGuckian, the sexual ambiguity of Richard Murphy, the various bodies of Beckett and Almodovar, the graphic in Bourke, moral politics in the Free State,
confessional discourse in Kate O'Brien, the sexuality in religion, self-reflexivity and performance in Robert McLiam Wilson, the place of the HIV body in Irish television broadcasting,
representations of de Valera in the recorded memory of Neil Jordan, masculinity and victimization in Intermission, rewrites of the self in the songs of Suzanne Vega, and new ideas about Irish
women in sport. Annotation 穢2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
