The Vibrant House

Overview

This collection of short memoirs and critical essays explores the relation between home as metaphor and symbol, and home as a physical, material and spatial entity. In the first section, 'Our house,' Colette Bryce, Eil���©an N���­ Chuillean���¡in, Theo Dorgan, Mary Morrissy and Macdara Woods remember houses from their childhoods and show, in Ni Chuilleanain's words, how the house is a 'way of understanding the world, its differences and boundaries.' In the second section, entitled 'Their house,' Angela Bourke, Nicholas Grene, Adam Hanna, Howard Keeley, Lucy McDiarmid and Maureen O'Connor look at domestic sites as various as Maeve Brennan's childhood home in Ranelagh and Synge's stage spaces. An essay by Rhona Richman Kenneally serves as a theoretical introduction to the collection, and framing poems by Vona Groarke suggest a poet's version of 'How to read a building.' A selection of images featuring the houses discussed in the contributions support this book's emphasis on the Irish home as a vibrant space of personal- and national-identity formation. *** "This captivating, conversational, erudite, and immensely entertaining collection will have readers returning to it again and again for insights into family configurations, behaviorial values, and the state of human nature - past and present." --The Celtic Collection, April 2018 [Subject: Literary Criticism, Poetry, Memoir, Irish Literature, Irish Studies]