George Moore

The Irish writer George Moore (1852-1933) was a very significant and often controversial figure on the literary stages of Paris, London and Dublin at a key cultural moment. Between 1880 and 1931, his creative involvements included spells with literary theatres in London and Dublin, jousts with the daring and repression of the fin de siecle, and a hail-and-farewell to Yeats and the Irish Revival. This collection of essays offers fresh insights into diverse elements of his oeuvre and reflects some of the wide variety in Moore's literary innovations, influences and legacy. Contributors note his pioneering contributions to the short story, his penetrating insights into Greek classical literature, his avant-garde feminism and egalitarianism, and - what may surprise 21st-century readers of biblical-theme blockbusters - his sensitive but contentious novelistic treatment of the historical Jesus. In this volume, there are studies of sophisticated composition, and fresh approaches to textual analysis. The multiple Moore talents are scrutinised, myths are dispelled and new evidence is uncovered for historic linkages. George Moore's anticipation of Freudian psychological insights and his engagement with Darwinian theses are but two of his close involvements with key nineteenth-century figures. Manet, Degas, Parnell, Kant, Maupassant, Gladstone, Zola, Marx and Woolf must feature on the list of names that are inseparable from Moore's life and work. Yeats and Joyce also loom large and their under-acknowledged indebtedness to Moore poses difficult questions for literary history. While Moore's own debt to French artistic influences, English models, and Irish heritage has long been recognised, perceptions of Moore's writing from outside the Anglophone world highlight issues that demand further consideration. This multi-faceted author is well-served by these new studies that, in turn, suggest additional avenues yet to be explored.'The dust jacket ... announces that the volumes eighteen essays ... offer ",fresh insights into diverse elements", of Moore's oeuvre and reflect the wide variety of his ",literary innovations, influences and legacy.", Readers will not be disappointed: here is MOore in all shapes and guises - from autobiographer to Voltairian - through the lenses of Irish, English, American, French, Spanish, Brazilian, and Greek scholars.'From a review in English Literature in TransitionPraise for the book:",This volume is a most welcome and timely reassessment of George Moore's significance in Irish and world literature, of his sense of innovation, his modernism, his significance to James Joyce, his artistic role. The variety of the theoretical approaches, of the national backgrounds of the authors, their emphasis on Moore's significance in their own countries all contribute to the interest of this book.This is an excellent analysis of the significance of what Deleuze and Gattari call ",minority literature",, i. e. ",the literature of a minority written in the language of the majority, a literature in which compulsive expression of revolutionary sentiment cannot be avoided by its author",.Moore is rendered visible in his working and reworking of the written text and the process through which textual grammar reveals psychic grammar is made explicit.",Prof. J. Brihault",George Moore: Artistic Visions and Literary Worlds is an engaging portrait of [the writer] in literary perspective",Nicholas Allen, Ass. Prof at the Univ. of North Carolinain The Irish Times Weekend Review, Saturday, June 30, 2007