Irish Catholic Gothic: The Heretical Gothicisms of James Joyce, Seamus Heaney and Neil Jordan

The article focusses on the distinguishing features of Irish Gothic, and of Irish Catholic Gothic within this tradition, and identifies its elements in the works of James Joyce, Seamus Heaney and Neil Jordan. Within the vast reality of Global Gothic, Irish Gothic is a very interesting case. From a theoretical point of view, it has always been a complicated terrain, so much so that the critic who is generally regarded as its founding father has also been the first to doubt the possibility of its very existence. The Gothic and the Gothicisms of Seamus Heaney’s poetry, James Joyce’s prose and Neil Jordan’s films and novels are, in their varying degrees and nuances, evidence that Ireland’s literary and artistic Gothic output is far from having exhausted itself, or its potential, in both creative and in critical terms.