Ageing Masculinities in Irish Literature and Visual Culture

Michaela Schrage-Früh is lecturer in German at NUI Galway. She is the author of Emerging Identities: Myth, Nation and Gender in the Poetry of Eavan Boland, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Medbh McGuckian (2004) and Philosophy, Dreaming and the Literary Imagination (2016). She has authored numerous articles and co-edited several collections on representations of gender and ageing in literature and culture. Tony Tracy is lecturer in Film and Media Studies at NUI Galway. His research centres on film history and Irish cinema with a particular interest in masculinities. He has authored numerous articles and co-edited a number of collections including Irish Masculinity and Popular Culture: Tiger Tales (2014) and John Huston: Essays on a Restless Director (2010).

Introduction: Ageing Masculinities in Irish Literature and Visual Culture
Michaela Schrage-Früh and Tony Tracy

DRAMA




Taking the "Black Stick": Ageing Husbands and Fathers in the Plays of J. M. Synge and Teresa Deevy
Mária Kurdi




"Are all the monks old men?" Ageing and the Male Monastic Community in Brian Friel’s The Enemy Within
Giovanna Tallone






Father Ireland on Stage: Representations of Social Change and Ageing Masculinities in Crisis
Ciara L. Murphy

POETRY




Poetics at the Limit: Embodiment, Masculinities, and Ageing in Samuel Beckett’s Early Poetry Collection Echo’s Bones
Heike Hartung




Masculinity, Ageing, and Midlife Crisis in the Poetry of Paul Muldoon and Paul Durcan
Anne Karhio




Not Sailing to Byzantium: Aged Masculinities and Latour’s Matters of Concern in the Late Works of Irish Male Poets
Katarzyna Ostalska



FICTION




"That the Youth May Throw Us Aside": Fatherhood, Ageing Masculinities, and the Politics of Insecurity in Mid-Twentieth-Century Irish Fiction
Loic Wright




Stuck in the Old Times: A Male-character Analysis on Three Irish Novels Through Corpus Stylistics
Cassandra S. Tully




Uncanny Reflections: Older Widowers in John Banville’s The Sea, Sebastian Barry’s The Secret Scripture and Anne Griffin’s When All is Said
Michaela Schrage-Früh




"Caught suddenly by the land shifting": Ageing Masculinity and Rural Ireland in Recent Irish Short Fiction
Orlaith Darling






"A bridge to nowhere": Arrested Development, Trauma, Liminality, and the Ageing Irish Exile in Bernard MacLaverty’s Midwinter Break
Clare Brannigan




"Shades of Masculinities": Midlife and Caring Masculinity in Mike McCormack’s Solar Bones
Brenda O’Connell




Colm Tóibín and Henry James: Portrait of an Ageing Master
Heather Ingman



VISUAL CULTURE




Seán Keating’s Ireland – the Land of Old Men
Katarzyna Kociołek




Ageing Masculinities and Irish Traditional Music on Screen
Verena Commins and Méabh Ní Fhuartháin




Changing the Picture: Older Men’s Responses to Media Representations of Ageing in an Irish Context



Margaret O’Neill and Áine Ní Léime