Postcolonial Settings in the Fiction of James Clarence Mangan, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and Bram Stoker

This book explores how three Anglo-Irish writers, J.C. Mangan, J.S. Le Fanu and Bram Stoker, use settings in their short fictions to recreate, depict and confront Ireland’s colonial situation in the nineteenth century. This study provides an innovative approach by targeting a genre (the short story) which has not been explored in its entirety— certainly not within nineteenth century Ireland -  much less using a postcolonial approach to the short story. Added to this is the fact that it analyses how these writers used settings as an anticolonial tool. To do so, the book is divided into two major sections, an analysis of Irish settings and non-Irish ones. It works on the premise that all three writers used the idea of displacement to target colonialism and its effects on Irish society. In short, this book addresses a gap in scholarship, as the Irish Gothic short story as a decolonizing tool has not been sufficiently and globally studied.

Richard Jorge completed his PhD at the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain, where he researched the relationship between the short story and the Irish Gothic tradition in the writings of James Clarence Mangan, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and Bram Stoker. He has worked at various universities and has also taught literature at an IB International school. Currently, Richard is teaching at the Department of English, German and Translation and Interpretation Studies in the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Spain, while continuing with his research on the Irish short story in the nineteenth century. Recent publications include Anglo-Irish Representations and Postcolonial Discourse in J. S. Le Fanu's "The Familiar" (Nineteenth Century Contexts, 2021), Untranslatable Characters: James Clarence Mangan and the English Language (English Studies, 2021), Debunking Protestant Celticism: Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's Language Appropriation in "The Quare Gander" and An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street (Journal of Language, Literature and Culture, 2020).