Opening the Field: Irish Women, Texts and Contexts (review)

Appearing more that fifteen years after the extensive criticism that arose from the virtual omission of Irish female writers in the Field Day Anthology in 1991, Patricia Boyle Haberstroh and Christine St. Peter attend here to the ongoing dialogue on the dissemination and status of Irish female writing that followed the release of The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing: Irish Women's Writing and Traditions in 2002. This collection of essays, strengthened by each critic's respective approach to a variety of works by Ireland's women writers, offers a multifarious focus on the contexts through which texts may be read and analyzed. Haberstroh and St. Peter's collection draws on the work of prominent critics—Gerardine Meaney, Heidi Hansson, Cathy Leeney, Luz Mar González Arias, and Ann Owens Weekes among them—demonstrates both a refreshing approach to archiving and introducing some lesser-known work by well-known Irish female writers, and to introducing the work of authors seldom studied in Irish literature. The engaging, thoughtful criticism gathered here can teach the Irish Studies expert, the general Irish cultural enthusiast, and the student of Irish literature, alike.

In considering the complexities involved in assembling The Field Day Anthology Volumes IV and V, Gerardine Meaney's "Engendering the Postmodern Canon? The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, Volumes IV & V: Women's Writing and Traditions" encapsulates the value and challenge of assembling anthologies and collections of criticism that pertain to the historically marginalized role of female writers. Such work demanded a careful balance between demonstrating the value of a variety of writers and their work, while simultaneously refusing to annex such work under the categories of "minor writing." or as separate but equal to the copious male contributors to Irish letters whose work appeared in the first three volumes of The Field Day Anthology. As Meaney delineates her involvement in editing portions of The Field Day Anthology Volumes IV and V, she suggests that expansion of the canon to include historically marginalized contributors requires substantial paradigm shifts that will inevitably destabilize traditionally static categories for excellence or value.

Recognizing the repercussions of such work, Meaney's essay and Haberstroh and St. Peter's collection as a whole, reflect how such shifts in traditional conceptions of Irish letters can yield a richer understanding of Ireland's literary traditions, one that better reflects the population from which such art has emerged. The principles guiding the latter volumes of The Field Day Anthology challenged notions of established conceptions of an Irish literary canon; Haberstroh and St. Peter's collection extends this complicated restructuring and reconsideration of the region's literary tradition. Such an endeavor teaches through its own example. Much as Meaney can consider the significance of her editorial contributions to The Field Day Anthology Volumes IV and V and their resounding effects in the past five years, Haberstroh and Peter's volume suggests that "Opening the Field" will be an ongoing effort perpetuated only by continued archival work and a commitment to analysis and criticism of previously neglected though valuable literary contributions from Ireland's women.

Opening the Field can serve as a useful teaching text. This collection emulates the values of inclusion, exploration, and uncovering that have informed its assembly. Patricia Coughlan's "Rereading Peig Sayers: Women's Autobiography, Social History and Narrative Art" offers an introduction to the prolific oral storyteller in Peig Sayers; following this immersion in the details of Sayers's biography, and a synopsis on the documentation of her repertoire as dictated to her son, Micheál Ó Gaoithín, Coughlan suggests that Sayers's work needs reintroduction and reexamination in regard to the political and cultural significance of her contributions to twentieth century Irish literature and culture. As a figure who could speak but could not write in Irish, Sayers's storytelling serves as a particularly potent nexus where Ireland's traditional views of femininity, aesthetics, culture, and...