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Title: Literary Criticism and the Recovery of Banned Books: The Case of Kate O'brien's Mary Lavelle.
Author : Ariel
Release Date : January 01, 2010
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
Pages : * pages
Size : 233 KB

Description

In discussing a given work and writer, one of the critic's implicit objectives is to make a case for or against their inclusion in the literary canon. The political nature of this objective is heightened in the case of previously censored books that have remained relatively marginal and is especially emphatic in situations wherein a novel is banned almost immediately after its publication. Because of the rapidity of the ban, often the book does not receive an initial readership. As a result, the book in question becomes cloaked in a form of silence, its contents known to a select few who are connected in high cultural circles while the mass public remains largely ignorant of its existence. (1) Kate O'Brien's Mary Lavelle is one such novel. Published in 1936 and banned in Ireland on 29 December of that same year, its Prohibition Order under the Censorship of Publications Act of 1929 was not revoked until 1967, when the passage of amending legislation released all titles that had been banned for a time of twelve years or more. (2) It is therefore not surprising to find that much of the critical work undertaken on the novel has been in the post-1970 period, although the establishment of Irish Literature as a serious field of study, the ever-increasing academic publishing industry, and the institutional acceptance of more women and women writers were further contributing factors. In his history of the Irish novel, James Cahalan makes the additional claim that O'Brien and other female writers of this period, such as Molly Keane and Maura Laverty, began to enter the canon in the 1980s due largely to reprints of their novels by the feminist presses Arlen House and Virago (204). This recuperative work by fringe presses has helped to spark scholarly interest in formerly overlooked and banned works and made them available for classroom teaching.