Irish modernism and the politics of sexual health
This thesis explores the politicized role of sexual health as a concept, discourse, and subject of debate within Irish modernism. Combining perspectives from Irish Studies, the New Modernist Studies, and the Social History of Medicine, it traces the ways in which authors, politicians, and activists...
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Idioma: | English |
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2020
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| _version_ | 1826311973631950848 |
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| author | Houston, LM |
| author2 | Dwan, D |
| author_facet | Dwan, D Houston, LM |
| author_sort | Houston, LM |
| collection | OXFORD |
| description | This thesis explores the politicized role of sexual health as a concept, discourse, and subject of debate within Irish modernism. Combining perspectives from Irish Studies, the New Modernist Studies, and the Social History of Medicine, it traces the ways in which authors, politicians, and activists in nineteenth and twentieth-century Ireland harnessed debates over sexual hygiene, venereal disease, birth control, fertility, and eugenics to envisage competing models of Irish identity, culture, and political community. Reading the work of canonical authors (W.B. Yeats, J.M. Synge, George Bernard Shaw, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Flann O’Brien) and less often discussed figures (Oliver St John Gogarty, Signe Toksvig, Kate O’Brien) in conversation with a range of contemporaneous medical, scientific, and legal writing on sexual health, this thesis catalogues and interrogate the ways in which an increasingly medicalized and politicized conception of sex informed the emergence and development of modernism in Ireland. At the same time, by reading the work of these literary figures alongside the more polemical and journalistic writing of figures such as Arthur Griffith, Maud Gonne, and Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington it also reveals the ways in which key events in Irish cultural and political history – the Parnell Split, the "Playboy" riots, the passage of the 1929 Censorship of Publications Act – contributed to and were shaped by ongoing debates and dilemmas in the field of sexual health. In doing so, this thesis offers both a reconsideration of the history of sex and its regulation in Ireland, and a new paradigm through which to understand modernism’s engagement with sex, health, and the body.
Part One examines the role of sexual health discourse in two of the most significant controversies in the cultural and political history of modern Ireland: the Parnell Split and the "Playboy" riots. In both cases, it reveals the ways in which nationalists and modernists were united in their use of a shared rhetoric of sexual pathology to diagnose the perceived ills of Irish political and cultural life, by which they typically meant one another, and to articulate often conflicting models of personal, cultural, and political autonomy.
Part Two explores how figurations of venereal disease, accounts of its aetiology, and campaigns to regulate its spread were used by figures such as Joyce, Gogarty, Griffith, and Gonne to critique British militarism in Ireland. At the same time, it reveals the ways in which Joyce was to distance himself from the more chauvinistic deployments of this rhetoric, particularly where they concerned Ireland’s Jewish population.
Part Three addresses arguably the most significant point of intersection between debates over sexual health and modernism in Ireland: the Censorship of Publications Act and its infamous prohibition of printed material relating to contraception, birth control, and abortion. Where conventional accounts of the Act’s passage and operation have framed the responses of Irish modernists such as Yeats, Beckett, and Kate O’Brien as ethically valorous and politically subversive rejections of sexual repression and state-mandated philistinism, this section of my thesis reveals the ideological pitfalls and tensions that could attend such opposition, particularly with regards to eugenics.
Part Four explores the legacy of sexual health as a focus of social and cultural debate in 1960s Ireland, using the late work of Brian O’Nolan (Flann O’Brien, Myles na gCopaleen, etc) to highlight the increasing exhaustion of Irish modernism’s iconoclastic engagement with a topic which nevertheless remained culturally and politically urgent. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-07T08:19:11Z |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oxford-uuid:c0074bc7-2847-447e-85e2-f580d83b6998 |
| institution | University of Oxford |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-07T08:19:11Z |
| publishDate | 2020 |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | oxford-uuid:c0074bc7-2847-447e-85e2-f580d83b69982024-01-17T08:34:59ZIrish modernism and the politics of sexual healthThesishttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_db06uuid:c0074bc7-2847-447e-85e2-f580d83b6998Theater--Ireland--Dublin--HistoryGender identity in literatureLiterature and society--Ireland--History--20th centuryTheater--Ireland--HistoryEugenics--HistoryIrish literatureGender identityCensorship in literatureNationalism--Ireland--History--20th centuryPolitics and literature--Ireland--History--20th centuryMedicine in literatureModernism (Literature)Irish literature--History and criticismLiterature and history--Ireland--History--20th centuryIreland--History--19th centuryCensorshipTheater--Ireland--Dublin--History--20th centuryLiterature and medicineIreland--History--20th centuryIrish literature--20th century--History and criticismModernism (Literature)--IrelandSexually transmitted diseasesWomen and literature--Ireland--History--20th centuryFertility in literatureFertilityBirth controlBirth control in literatureSexEnglish literature--Irish authors--History and criticismSex in literatureSexual healthNationalism--Ireland--History--19th centuryMedicine--Europe--HistoryLiteratureSex and historyEnglishHyrax Deposit2020Houston, LMDwan, DThis thesis explores the politicized role of sexual health as a concept, discourse, and subject of debate within Irish modernism. Combining perspectives from Irish Studies, the New Modernist Studies, and the Social History of Medicine, it traces the ways in which authors, politicians, and activists in nineteenth and twentieth-century Ireland harnessed debates over sexual hygiene, venereal disease, birth control, fertility, and eugenics to envisage competing models of Irish identity, culture, and political community. Reading the work of canonical authors (W.B. Yeats, J.M. Synge, George Bernard Shaw, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Flann O’Brien) and less often discussed figures (Oliver St John Gogarty, Signe Toksvig, Kate O’Brien) in conversation with a range of contemporaneous medical, scientific, and legal writing on sexual health, this thesis catalogues and interrogate the ways in which an increasingly medicalized and politicized conception of sex informed the emergence and development of modernism in Ireland. At the same time, by reading the work of these literary figures alongside the more polemical and journalistic writing of figures such as Arthur Griffith, Maud Gonne, and Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington it also reveals the ways in which key events in Irish cultural and political history – the Parnell Split, the "Playboy" riots, the passage of the 1929 Censorship of Publications Act – contributed to and were shaped by ongoing debates and dilemmas in the field of sexual health. In doing so, this thesis offers both a reconsideration of the history of sex and its regulation in Ireland, and a new paradigm through which to understand modernism’s engagement with sex, health, and the body. Part One examines the role of sexual health discourse in two of the most significant controversies in the cultural and political history of modern Ireland: the Parnell Split and the "Playboy" riots. In both cases, it reveals the ways in which nationalists and modernists were united in their use of a shared rhetoric of sexual pathology to diagnose the perceived ills of Irish political and cultural life, by which they typically meant one another, and to articulate often conflicting models of personal, cultural, and political autonomy. Part Two explores how figurations of venereal disease, accounts of its aetiology, and campaigns to regulate its spread were used by figures such as Joyce, Gogarty, Griffith, and Gonne to critique British militarism in Ireland. At the same time, it reveals the ways in which Joyce was to distance himself from the more chauvinistic deployments of this rhetoric, particularly where they concerned Ireland’s Jewish population. Part Three addresses arguably the most significant point of intersection between debates over sexual health and modernism in Ireland: the Censorship of Publications Act and its infamous prohibition of printed material relating to contraception, birth control, and abortion. Where conventional accounts of the Act’s passage and operation have framed the responses of Irish modernists such as Yeats, Beckett, and Kate O’Brien as ethically valorous and politically subversive rejections of sexual repression and state-mandated philistinism, this section of my thesis reveals the ideological pitfalls and tensions that could attend such opposition, particularly with regards to eugenics. Part Four explores the legacy of sexual health as a focus of social and cultural debate in 1960s Ireland, using the late work of Brian O’Nolan (Flann O’Brien, Myles na gCopaleen, etc) to highlight the increasing exhaustion of Irish modernism’s iconoclastic engagement with a topic which nevertheless remained culturally and politically urgent. |
| spellingShingle | Theater--Ireland--Dublin--History Gender identity in literature Literature and society--Ireland--History--20th century Theater--Ireland--History Eugenics--History Irish literature Gender identity Censorship in literature Nationalism--Ireland--History--20th century Politics and literature--Ireland--History--20th century Medicine in literature Modernism (Literature) Irish literature--History and criticism Literature and history--Ireland--History--20th century Ireland--History--19th century Censorship Theater--Ireland--Dublin--History--20th century Literature and medicine Ireland--History--20th century Irish literature--20th century--History and criticism Modernism (Literature)--Ireland Sexually transmitted diseases Women and literature--Ireland--History--20th century Fertility in literature Fertility Birth control Birth control in literature Sex English literature--Irish authors--History and criticism Sex in literature Sexual health Nationalism--Ireland--History--19th century Medicine--Europe--History Literature Sex and history Houston, LM Irish modernism and the politics of sexual health |
| title | Irish modernism and the politics of sexual health |
| title_full | Irish modernism and the politics of sexual health |
| title_fullStr | Irish modernism and the politics of sexual health |
| title_full_unstemmed | Irish modernism and the politics of sexual health |
| title_short | Irish modernism and the politics of sexual health |
| title_sort | irish modernism and the politics of sexual health |
| topic | Theater--Ireland--Dublin--History Gender identity in literature Literature and society--Ireland--History--20th century Theater--Ireland--History Eugenics--History Irish literature Gender identity Censorship in literature Nationalism--Ireland--History--20th century Politics and literature--Ireland--History--20th century Medicine in literature Modernism (Literature) Irish literature--History and criticism Literature and history--Ireland--History--20th century Ireland--History--19th century Censorship Theater--Ireland--Dublin--History--20th century Literature and medicine Ireland--History--20th century Irish literature--20th century--History and criticism Modernism (Literature)--Ireland Sexually transmitted diseases Women and literature--Ireland--History--20th century Fertility in literature Fertility Birth control Birth control in literature Sex English literature--Irish authors--History and criticism Sex in literature Sexual health Nationalism--Ireland--History--19th century Medicine--Europe--History Literature Sex and history |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT houstonlm irishmodernismandthepoliticsofsexualhealth |