"In Holdridge’s argument, nature emerges as something, or a series of somethings, that humans try to tame and manage but that constantly thwarts such efforts at control. This exceptionally capacious and flexible definition of nature allows Holdridge to forge connections across a wide range of texts and time periods. The result is frequently illuminating."—Marjorie Howes, James Joyce Quarterly
"Holdridge makes fascinating and sometimes surprising connections that thoughtfully invite the reader to seriously interrogate the imaginative and historical consequences of the nature/culture divide."—Christine Cusick, Seton Hill University
"This is an ambitious and wide-ranging study on an important nexus of concerns prominent in Irish writing for more than 200 years. . . . Given current critical interest in spatial concerns in Irish literature and culture, this work is well positioned to make a significant contribution to the field."—Lucy Collins, University College Dublin
"This theoretically nuanced study is a wide-ranging substantial contribution to the developing field of Irish ecocriticism."—Terence Brown, Trinity College Dublin
Description
Since the eighteenth century, landscape has played complex psychological and political roles in the narrative of Irishness, entailing questions of memory, family, home, exile, and forgiveness. In Stepping through Origins, Holdridge explores the interplay of these concepts in literature. For Irish writers from Swift to Heaney, the Irish landscape has remained not only a reflection of Irish troubles but, much like aesthetic experience, a space in which the bitterness of family or national life can be understood, if not entirely overcome. Through deft analysis of works by leading Irish writers including Lady Morgan, Yeats, Joyce, Louis MacNeice, and Elizabeth Bowen, Holdridge expands and enriches our understanding of how landscape has served as a palimpsest for both family and country, connecting personal with collective memory, localized places with their regions, and individual with national identity.
About the Author
Jefferson Holdridge is professor of English at Wake Forest University and director of Wake Forest University Press. He is the author of The Poetry of Paul Muldoon and Those Mingled Seas: The Poetry of W. B. Yeats, the Beautiful and the Sublime.
January 2022