Satire, Youth, and Gender in Contemporary Irish Fiction

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions and would be grateful for notification of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions. Earlier versions of some parts of this manuscript appeared in Terrazas Gallego (2013; 2017; 2019a; 2019b; 2020a; 2020b; 2020c; 2021; 2022; 2024a; 2024b) and are reprinted with the permission of the editors.

Working on this book has been a truly life-changing experience for me and it would not have been possible without the support and guidance that I received from many people. I would like to acknowledge support for this publication as part of the project “Post-Human Intersections in Irish and Galician Literatures” PID2022-136251NB-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by “ERDF: A Way of Making Europe.” I also want to thank the Maynooth University Arts and Humanities Institute (MUAHI) for awarding me a Visiting Fellowship during the autumn of 2023. Many thanks also to the Vice-Rectorate for Research and Internationalization of the University of La Rioja for funding (REGI 22/58 and EICOD 23/08). This research also aligns with the objectives of the Centre of Irish Studies Banna/Bond (EFACIS), which I lead at the University of La Rioja, as well as with those of three research groups I belong to: (1) GRID (Representations of Identity in Literary and Filmic Texts in English) at the University of La Rioja; (2) ICCLAS (Identities and Changes in Anglophone Cultures and Literatures) at the University of Burgos, Spain; and (3) Intersectional Humanities Research Strength at MUAHI, Ireland.

I would like to say a big thank you to the General Editor of Peter Lang’s Reimagining Series, Eamon Maher, and to Senior Commissioning Editor Anthony Mason, for trusting me to carry out this project and for all the support and encouragement they gave me during the months I spent writing this monograph. Without their guidance, understanding and constant feedback, this volume would not exist. I also want to thank the readers for their helpful recommendations during the process. They were very useful and helped enormously in clarifying my ideas and shaping the structure of the book. I am also most grateful to my mentor at MUAHI, Michael G. Cronin. It has been a pleasure to work on this project—I thank him for his kindness every time I asked for help. He has taught me much and significantly assisted me at Maynooth during my stay as a Visiting Fellow at MUAHI and with this entire monograph project. I also would like to express my deep appreciation and love to Professor Linda Connolly for her advice and friendship at various stages of this book’s writing.

I gratefully acknowledge Irish writers Evelyn Conlon, Alan McMonagle, Emer Martin, and Naoise Dolan for taking the time to speak with me at various points during the process and for the frankness, suggestions and generosity of their answers. I am immensely grateful for the support and love I received from several academics and friends, such as, María Amor Barros-del-Río, Stephanie Schwerter, María Rosario Casas Coelho, Miguel Ángel Muro Munilla, Neil Sammells, and my research team in Galicia. Many thanks for encouraging me to write this book, for pushing me to persevere, for their thoughtful recommendations and humor during this project. My sincere gratitude also goes out to other colleagues such as Alan Munton and Feargal Wheelan for they were always willing to offer me valuable feedback. I truly appreciate the help of proofreader, and copy-editor, Kim Arnold. I very much appreciated her patience, genuine interest and generous support while I was finishing this project.

Finally, I would also like to say a heartfelt thank you to my students for teaching me so much in the last 26 years and, above all, to my family, José Manuel, and loved ones for their forbearance and emotional support during the writing of this book. I would have been unable to complete it without the supportive environment which all of them provided in the last two years.

This study focuses on the satirical practice of four contemporary Irish writers spanning three decades: namely, Patrick McCabe, Emer Martin, Alan McMonagle, and Naoise Dolan. The analysis of their satirical ammunition in chosen novels featuring young satiric characters through a gender (also a queer lens) perspective attempts to breach a conspicuous research gap. The book argues that their dialogic and playful use of language, rhetoric, Menippean satire, and overarching goal to understand the experience of postmodernity have been neither sufficiently noted nor received the value and recognition they deserve. Despite readings which merely regard them as transgressive, dark, or cynical, these novels actually subvert realist conventions to constitute incisive satires of authority and pernicious contemporary socio-economic, cultural and ideological phenomena. I contend that McCabe’s and Martin’s groundbreaking early and later work have been inadequately examined, perhaps due to the complex and polemic nature of their satire, or to the politics of intersectionality, nationality, and ability prevalent in them. McMonagle’s beautifully crafted stories, inspired by the theater of the absurd and noir, have achieved quiet recognition, and Dolan’s challenging post-Victorian novels, while commended highly, have too often attracted parallels to other contemporary Irish writers.1