Books by Aintzane Legarreta Mentxaka
'Key Irish Women Writers: Kate O'Brien'
EER publishers, 2020
Academic monograph.
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Different generations and historical moments have el... more Academic monograph.
........................
Different generations and historical moments have elicited various readings from Kate O’Brien’s lusciously rich and demandingly ambiguous legacy. Once she was a specimen in the bestiary of Irish contrarians, later a tall sharp pike brandished by feminist academics, then a pied-a-terre for Catholic Ireland’s postcolonial scouts, and later still a caped crusader for non-normative dissidents. Kate O’Brien’s lively critical afterlife is still missing something: a thorough analysis of her aesthetics, now distinctive, now consonant with those of her peers. This book reviews salient critical concerns, places mortar in the gaps, and suggests some possible extensions in the work-in-progress that is a full assessment of Kate O’Brien.
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'Key Irish Women Writers: Kate O'Brien'
(commissioned monograph)
'Key Irish Women Writers' series
Series editors: Kathryn Laing and Sinead Mooney
EER publishers
To appear in 2021.
ISBN 9781913087364
The Postcolonial Traveller
Palo Alto (CA): Academica Press, 2016
Academic monograph considering the ambivalent identificati... more Palo Alto (CA): Academica Press, 2016
Academic monograph considering the ambivalent identifications of colonial subjects when confronted with 'foreign' ethnic distinctiveness, and how this ambivalence is articulated in literature. The book focuses on the Irish writer Kate O'Brien and her engagement with Basque culture.
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A Pair of New Eyes: A Play
Dublin: Gur Cake Editions, 2013
A historical play about Mary Rosse (photographer, architect, designer, blacksmith) and Mary Ward ... more A historical play about Mary Rosse (photographer, architect, designer, blacksmith) and Mary Ward (microscopist, astronomer, entomologist), two women from mid-nineteenth century Ireland who were world-wide pioneers in science, technology, and art, and were life-ling friends. 'A Pair of New Eyes' was conceived as a multimedia period drama, and aimed at bringing these forgotten women's achievements back into public consciousness. However, rather than staged biography, the play uses historical information to offer an existential parable. The 'A Pair of New Eyes' premiered in the Sean O'Casey Theatre Dublin in November 2013, staged by Born to Burn productions. A second run of the play, with a slightly revised text, took place in Smock Alley Theatre Dublin in August 2014, with additional performances at 'The Hermitage' Enda's Park Rathfarnham, and Birr Town Theatre in County Offaly, Ireland, in Aug-Sept 2014. The play was received enthusiastically by the public. The book of the play, by artisan publisher Gur Cake Editions, is a limited edition of the original production text, including director's notes, and footnotes on the historical sources for the play.
Kate O'Brien and the Fiction of Identity
Jefferson (NC): McFarland, 2011
Academic monograph recontextualising the work of Kate O'Brien, with sections on modernism, interm... more Academic monograph recontextualising the work of Kate O'Brien, with sections on modernism, intermediality, history, life-writing, activist literature, and philosophy. The focus of the study is the novel 'Mary Lavelle' (1936).
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Jefferson (NC): McFarland, 2011
published essays by Aintzane Legarreta Mentxaka
"Modernist Silence"
Irish Women’s Writing at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, 2020
-“‘Modernist Silence’ in Irish New Woman Fiction”. Irish Women’s Writing at the Turn of the Twent... more -“‘Modernist Silence’ in Irish New Woman Fiction”. Irish Women’s Writing at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: Alternative Histories, New Narratives. Kathryn Laing and Sinéad Mooney eds. EER Press, 2020.
Irish University Review - Print ISSN: 0021-1427, 2018
Convergences in the work of Kate O'Brien and Virginia Woolf range from literary influences and po... more Convergences in the work of Kate O'Brien and Virginia Woolf range from literary influences and political alignments, to a shared approach to narrative point of view, structure, or conceptual use of words. Common ground includes existentialist preoccupations and tropes, a pacifism which did not hinder support for the left in the Spanish Civil War, the linking of feminism and decolonization, an affinity with anarchism, the identification of the normativity of fascism, and a determination to represent deviant sexualities and affects. Making evident the importance of the connection, O'Brien conceived and designed The Flower of May (1953), one of her most experimental and misunderstood novels, to paid homage to Woolf's oeuvre.
Otherness journal [peer-reviewed], Aarhus University ISSN: 1904-6022, 2018
Egypt has been embedded in Western consciousness for the last two centuries, and its (pre-colonia... more Egypt has been embedded in Western consciousness for the last two centuries, and its (pre-colonial) culture has reinvigorated the European and North-American store of myth to an immeasurable extent. The essay investigates the discreet but powerful interventions of Western popular culture in translating Egypt for Western consumption, both building and resisting stereotypes. It discusses Bram Stoker’s critically neglected Egyptian novel 'The Jewel of Seven Stars' (1903), and three popular renderings of Egypt produced around a hundred years later, which rewrite stereotypes from within: the film 'The Jewel of the Nile' (1985), the novel 'The Map of Love' (1999), and the documentary 'The Hidden History of Egypt' (2002).
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Everywhere, the Eye of Horus, the all-seeing all-controlling predatory westernised eye. Everywhere too, the resisting judeo-arabic Hamsa hand.... Western popular culture continues to produce discreet but powerful interventions translating Egypt for Western consumption, both building and resisting stereotypes, in novels, films, and TV documentaries. When they are considered through a feminist, anti-authoritarian, and postcolonial lens... these cultural interventions open up as political interventions, which aim at making audiences think, or rethink, or suspend our thinking.
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A.L.Mentxaka, “Egypt in Western Popular Culture: From Bram Stoker to The Jewel of the Nile”. 'Otherness' Journal. Vol. 6. No. 2 (Winter 2018): n.p.
“Miriam left the gaslit hall and went slowly upstairs”. With the opening sentence of Dorothy Rich... more “Miriam left the gaslit hall and went slowly upstairs”. With the opening sentence of Dorothy Richardson’s Pointed Roofs, written in 1913 and published in 1915, the English novel left the gaslit halls of Victorian fiction, and moved towards the attic of the human mind. The inventor of the ‘stream of consciousness’ method, Richardson was the first novelist to radically alter punctuation in order to reproduce thought. She also dismantled plot, disrupted structure, and played around with words and sentences much like a composer or a painter creating new combinations. Woolf declared that Richardson had invented a new sentence, “a psychological sentence of the feminine gender”. It was to become the template sentence of modernist fiction in English.
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Essay commissioned for the collection 'Remaking the Literary Canon in English: Women Writers, 1880-1920'. María Elena Jaime de Pablos and Antonella Cagnolati eds. Madrid: Síntesis, 2018, pp. 51-62.
Studi Irlandesi journal, 2019
Jazz is rarely discussed in modernist studies, yet its importance to the movement is crucial, as ... more Jazz is rarely discussed in modernist studies, yet its importance to the movement is crucial, as revolutionary intervention on Western music, for its aesthetic contribution, its relationship with popular culture, and its relevance to periodisation. The peculiar conjunction of modernism, jazz, and Ireland, offers a window into a neglected area of both modernism and Irish Studies which can help us reassess both. The pivot for the discussion is 'One Day in Winter' (Blackstairs Records, 2017), an album by Irish composer, pianist, and saxophonist Carole Nelson, a concept album directly inspired by the landscapes of Carlow, and, the essay argues, an example of neomodernism.
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"Jazz, Neomodernism, Ireland: Carole Nelson Trio's 'A Day in Winter'". 'Studi Irlandesi' journal, No. 9 (June 2019): 602-613.
ISSN: 2239-3978
'Joyce's Heirs' [peer reviewed collection], 2019
To Kate O’Brien, James Joyce was “the greatest Artist –there will never be another”. Despite this... more To Kate O’Brien, James Joyce was “the greatest Artist –there will never be another”. Despite this, her work las long been associated by critics with Balzac’s social vistas, George Elliot’s realism, and populist romance. It is only in the last few years that O’Brien has been discussed for her modernist interests and innovative style, including her rather original development of subtext and fictional autobiography, and her engagement with feminism, post-colonial Irishness, socialism, or q ueer representation. The influence of Joyce in her work is one of the areas that requires more investigation.
Elizabeth Foley O’Connor has recently argued that Joyce is not just a writer O’Brien admired, but in fact her “most sustained and pervasive literary mentor”. Katie Donovan said in 1988 that “James Joyce and Kate O’Brien are an incongruous pair –the former the giant of male Irish writers, the latter one of the least recognised of Irish women writers. Yet people once laughed at the idea of comparing Shakespeare with Jane Austen. They don’t any longer.”
This essay discusses points of convergence between O'Brien and Joyce, considering some of their ideas and beliefs, and some stylistic features shared by them. It focuses on the intertextual links between 'The Land of Spices' and 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man', and 'Mary Lavelle' and 'Ulysses', paying particular attention to two aspects: Anna-Stephen’s education, and Lavelle-Bloom’s flânerie.
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ISBN: 978-84-9860-727-7
Aintzane Legarreta Mentxaka," 'James Joyce is My Man': Kate O’Brien and James Joyce ". [peer-reviewed collection] 'Joyce’s heirs. Joyce’s imprint on recent global literatures', Olga Fernández Vicente ed., Bilbo/Bilbao: Basque Country University Press, 2019, pp. 8-23.
Free access:
https://web-argitalpena.adm.ehu.es/listaproductos.asp?IdProducts=UHPDF197277&titulo=Joyce%92s%20heirs.%20Joyce%92s%20imprint%20on%20recent%20global%20literatures
Film Into Novel: Kate O’Brien’s Modernist use of Film Techniques
'Viewpoints: Theoretical Perspectives on Irish Visual Texts', Clare Bracken and Emma Radley eds. Cork: Cork University Press, 2013, pp. 124-36
"W.B. Yeats and Taoism"
Daoism was an important, if unacknowledged, influence on the work of W.B.Yeats. The essay traces ... more Daoism was an important, if unacknowledged, influence on the work of W.B.Yeats. The essay traces daoist tropes and ideas through Yeats' poetry and his philosophical writings.
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essay published in 'Yeats/Elliot Review'. Little Rock, Arkansas. Vol. 22, No. 3 (Fall 2005): Whole issue.
"S exuality and Dysfunction in the Work of Kate O’Brien”
Kate O’Brien made a career of pushing the boundaries of what could be said in fiction. O’Brien’s ... more Kate O’Brien made a career of pushing the boundaries of what could be said in fiction. O’Brien’s work expanded the imaginative worlds of her readers, offered positive accounts of marginalised behaviours, denounced the hypocrisy of moral guardians, and celebrated the existential thrill of rehearsing freedoms. The essay considers several aspects of sexuality and affect in Kate O’Brien’s work, which can be deemed to be dysfunctional, or 'out of order'.
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[peer reviewed collection] 'Ireland and Dysfunction in Literature and Film', Asier Altuna ed. Newcastle: CSP, 2017, pp. 49-70.
"Where She Could Not Follow" – Jane Austen’s 'Mansfield Park'
English Language and Literature Studies journal, 2013
“Fanfic in Ireland”
A postmodern literature that breaches copyright, celebrates multiliteracy and intertextuality, an... more A postmodern literature that breaches copyright, celebrates multiliteracy and intertextuality, and is created within the context of a transnational community. Originally created in photocopied and stapled zines, circa 1968, with the development of the world wide web it takes off as the first important form of internet literature. It is fanfiction, a literature by fans, for fans, which borrows and reinterprets elements from popular media texts. This transnational community collectively produces some outstanding fiction, invents new genres, demolishes author-reader borders, and designs their own literary conventions. All of this happens unnoticed in the margins of literature. The essay focuses on 'Irish' fanfic writers, in the context of outlaw, transnational fanfic communities who have ejected national allegiances.
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essay published in 'Popular Culture and Postmodern Ireland', Wanda Balzano et al eds London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007, pp. 74-84.
"A New Picture: Eve Kosovsky Sedgwick's 'Between Men'"
Eve Sedgwick's book of literary criticism 'Between Men' was crucial in developing a new understan... more Eve Sedgwick's book of literary criticism 'Between Men' was crucial in developing a new understanding of triangulated relationships in classic literary texts of the nineteenth century and beyond. Her application of the anthropological and sociological term 'homosociality' has been enormously influential. The essay offers a critical archaeology of Sedgwick's notion of the homosocial.
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essay published in 'Irish Feminist Review'. Vo.l 3 (2007): 22-41.
'Essays in Irish Literary Criticism: Gender, Sexuality, and Corporeality.' collection. Sharon Tighe-Mooney et al eds. Lewinston: Edwin Mellen, 2008, pp. 229-245. , 2008
Politics and Feminism: The Basque Contexts of Kate O’Brien’s 'Mary Lavelle'
Irish University Review, Vol. 39, No. 1 (Spring/Summer 2009): 65-75.
“La Belle: Kate O’Brien and Female Beauty"
Accusations of stereotypical attitudes towards female beauty have completely missed the point of ... more Accusations of stereotypical attitudes towards female beauty have completely missed the point of the novelist Kate O'Brien's multi-valent and transgressive uses of the trope...
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essay published in the collection 'Women, Social and Cultural Change in 20th century Ireland', Sarah O’Connor et al eds. Newcastle: CSP, 2008, pp. 183- 198.
“Film Into Novel”
How normative are the boundaries of and between art mediums? The literary borrowing of filmic la... more How normative are the boundaries of and between art mediums? The literary borrowing of filmic language questions given and static definitions of art mediums, as well as rigid understandings of clear delimitations between art forms. The essay investigates links between mediums (inter-medial) and between art forms (inter-art) in literature. A deliberate and complex hybridization of artistic languages is characteristic of modernism, despite being regularly overlooked by critics. The essay investigates cinematic intermediality in the fiction of Kate O'Brien.
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essay published in the collection 'Viewpoints: Theoretical Perspectives on Irish Visual Texts', C. Bracken and E. Radley eds. Cork: Cork UP, 2013, pp, 124-36.
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Books by Aintzane Legarreta Mentxaka
........................
Different generations and historical moments have elicited various readings from Kate O’Brien’s lusciously rich and demandingly ambiguous legacy. Once she was a specimen in the bestiary of Irish contrarians, later a tall sharp pike brandished by feminist academics, then a pied-a-terre for Catholic Ireland’s postcolonial scouts, and later still a caped crusader for non-normative dissidents. Kate O’Brien’s lively critical afterlife is still missing something: a thorough analysis of her aesthetics, now distinctive, now consonant with those of her peers. This book reviews salient critical concerns, places mortar in the gaps, and suggests some possible extensions in the work-in-progress that is a full assessment of Kate O’Brien.
................................
'Key Irish Women Writers: Kate O'Brien'
(commissioned monograph)
'Key Irish Women Writers' series
Series editors: Kathryn Laing and Sinead Mooney
EER publishers
To appear in 2021.
ISBN 9781913087364
Academic monograph considering the ambivalent identifications of colonial subjects when confronted with 'foreign' ethnic distinctiveness, and how this ambivalence is articulated in literature. The book focuses on the Irish writer Kate O'Brien and her engagement with Basque culture.
....................................
......................
Jefferson (NC): McFarland, 2011
published essays by Aintzane Legarreta Mentxaka
..........................
Everywhere, the Eye of Horus, the all-seeing all-controlling predatory westernised eye. Everywhere too, the resisting judeo-arabic Hamsa hand.... Western popular culture continues to produce discreet but powerful interventions translating Egypt for Western consumption, both building and resisting stereotypes, in novels, films, and TV documentaries. When they are considered through a feminist, anti-authoritarian, and postcolonial lens... these cultural interventions open up as political interventions, which aim at making audiences think, or rethink, or suspend our thinking.
.................
A.L.Mentxaka, “Egypt in Western Popular Culture: From Bram Stoker to The Jewel of the Nile”. 'Otherness' Journal. Vol. 6. No. 2 (Winter 2018): n.p.
.....................
Essay commissioned for the collection 'Remaking the Literary Canon in English: Women Writers, 1880-1920'. María Elena Jaime de Pablos and Antonella Cagnolati eds. Madrid: Síntesis, 2018, pp. 51-62.
....................................
"Jazz, Neomodernism, Ireland: Carole Nelson Trio's 'A Day in Winter'". 'Studi Irlandesi' journal, No. 9 (June 2019): 602-613.
ISSN: 2239-3978
Elizabeth Foley O’Connor has recently argued that Joyce is not just a writer O’Brien admired, but in fact her “most sustained and pervasive literary mentor”. Katie Donovan said in 1988 that “James Joyce and Kate O’Brien are an incongruous pair –the former the giant of male Irish writers, the latter one of the least recognised of Irish women writers. Yet people once laughed at the idea of comparing Shakespeare with Jane Austen. They don’t any longer.”
This essay discusses points of convergence between O'Brien and Joyce, considering some of their ideas and beliefs, and some stylistic features shared by them. It focuses on the intertextual links between 'The Land of Spices' and 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man', and 'Mary Lavelle' and 'Ulysses', paying particular attention to two aspects: Anna-Stephen’s education, and Lavelle-Bloom’s flânerie.
....
==========
ISBN: 978-84-9860-727-7
Aintzane Legarreta Mentxaka," 'James Joyce is My Man': Kate O’Brien and James Joyce ". [peer-reviewed collection] 'Joyce’s heirs. Joyce’s imprint on recent global literatures', Olga Fernández Vicente ed., Bilbo/Bilbao: Basque Country University Press, 2019, pp. 8-23.
Free access:
https://web-argitalpena.adm.ehu.es/listaproductos.asp?IdProducts=UHPDF197277&titulo=Joyce%92s%20heirs.%20Joyce%92s%20imprint%20on%20recent%20global%20literatures
....
essay published in 'Yeats/Elliot Review'. Little Rock, Arkansas. Vol. 22, No. 3 (Fall 2005): Whole issue.
.......................
[peer reviewed collection] 'Ireland and Dysfunction in Literature and Film', Asier Altuna ed. Newcastle: CSP, 2017, pp. 49-70.
....
essay published in 'Popular Culture and Postmodern Ireland', Wanda Balzano et al eds London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007, pp. 74-84.
....
essay published in 'Irish Feminist Review'. Vo.l 3 (2007): 22-41.
................
essay published in the collection 'Women, Social and Cultural Change in 20th century Ireland', Sarah O’Connor et al eds. Newcastle: CSP, 2008, pp. 183- 198.
..........................
essay published in the collection 'Viewpoints: Theoretical Perspectives on Irish Visual Texts', C. Bracken and E. Radley eds. Cork: Cork UP, 2013, pp, 124-36.