A new anthology in two volumes will cover 1,400 years of writing by women, reports Helen Meany
The contents list of the women writers' volumes of the Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing was made public last night. This coincided with a debate on the two volumes at the Cúirt International Festival of Literature in Galway.
Five of the volumes' eight editors participated in the event at the Town Hall Theatre, which was chaired by Doireann Ní Bhriain. The contents list is now available on the publisher's website: www.corkuniversitypress.com
In the contemporary sections, names from the oral tradition, such as that of Traveller writer Nan Joyce, are included, along with a long list of writers including (at random) Marina Carr, Marie Jones, Gina Moxley, Paula Meehan, Eavan Boland, Moya Cannon, Mary Dorcey, Vona Groarke, Anne Enright, Anne Haverty, Enda Wyley, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and President Mary McAleese.
Present and past Irish Times writers loom large in many sections, including Rosita Boland and Katie Donovan (Contemporary Poetry), Maeve Binchy and Mary Morrissy (Contemporary Fiction), and Mary Maher, Nell Mc Cafferty, Mary Holland, Carol Coulter and Breda O'Brien ("The Republic of Ireland: the Politics of Sexuality").
However, the anthologies stretch back over 1,400 years of writing by Irish women, which was researched, recovered and presented in just over a decade. The publication of this mammoth work of scholarship has been keenly anticipated since it was first proposed in 1991. The two volumes will be published by Cork University Press in September.
When the first three volumes of the Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing were published in 1981, they provoked heated debate. Many feminist scholars and commentators were critical of the anthology's inadequate representation of women's writing. In response, the general editor, Seamus Deane, invited some of the project's critics to discuss the possibility of a supplementary volume. As research began, it became clear that two volumes would be needed to do justice to the mass of "interesting, important and exciting material that emerged even on our first investigation", the editors write in the Preface to Volumes IV and V.
The two volumes take a broad, interdisciplinary approach to the literary, political, cultural and social history of women in Ireland from 600 AD to the present. As in the first three volumes, the definition of the term "writing" is capacious: in this case the editors have expanded it to encompass "the way in which people use words". This means that all sorts of texts not conventionally considered to be literary will now be available to the general reader - in many cases, for the first time.
Historical records of all kinds - including those from Magdalen asylums and 19th-century women's prisons - take their place.
There is a substantial selection from the oral tradition, including the song tradition, and from the tradition of dinnseanchas (place-name lore). Texts written in Irish have all been translated, often in specially commissioned versions. Full bibliographies and biographies have been included, so that the two volumes will be an invaluable resource for further research.
There are eight broad sections, edited by specialists and arranged on a loosely chronological basis. These are: Medieval to Modern: Presences and Representations, 600-1900; Religion, Theology, Ethics and Science, 1500-2000; Sexuality; Oral Tradition; Women in Irish Society, 1200-2000; Politics, 1500-2000; Women's Writing in English, 1700-1960; Contemporary Writing, 1960-2000. The section editors are Máirín Ní Dhonnchadha, Margaret MacCurtain, Siobhan Kilfeather, Angela Bourke, Maria Luddy, Mary O'Dowd, Gerardine Meaney, Clair Willis, and there are also sub-section editors from a variety of different backgrounds, both academic and non-academic.
The editors stress that they are not interested in proposing a canon of major women writers. Instead, they hope to "challenge existing canons of Irish writing, existing versions of history, existing cultural myths".