Bridget English's Critical Reads

Dr. Bridget English holds a PhD in English from Maynooth University in County Kildare, Ireland. Her research interests lie in modern and contemporary Irish fiction and culture, theories of the novel, death studies, modernism, and the medical humanities. She has taught a variety of writing and literature courses at Maynooth University, Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, and is currently teaching in the First Year Writing program at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Bridget will discuss Laying Out the Bones: Death and Dying in the Modern Irish Novel on Thursday, 11/30 6pm at the Co-Op. 

The Good Funeral, by Thomas Long and Thomas Lynch - A compelling collection of essays on contemporary attitudes towards and rituals surrounding death. Long and Lynch make a convincing argument for the restoration of communal rituals regarding the burial of the dead such as the funeral procession in order to ease the pain of grief and loss.

From Here to Eternity, by Caitlin Doughty - A fascinating and profound book about how corpses are disposed of in several different cultures, this book addresses modern Western fears about death and the body. Doughty narrates the difficulties and joys of coping with bodily remains with remarkable honesty and humor. The book reads like a kind of morbid travelogue.

The Way We Die Now, by Seamus O'Mahony - Written in sparse and unflinching prose O'Mahony, an Irish physician, details the ways that the reality of dying is often obscured by medical professionals. O'Mahony offers no easy answers to difficult questions surrounding the end of life, but instead exposes the delusion and denial that characterizes Western attitudes towards death. A brutally honest book, not for the faint of heart.

Irish Wake Amusements, by Seán Ó Súilleabháin - An enjoyable and enlightening study of wake rituals in Ireland. Originally published in 1961, this book remains the definitive study of the "merry wake" including vivid details of the food consumed and games played in the wake house.

The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion - In her characteristic witty and meticulous prose Didion details the process of grieving for her husband who died suddenly at home. The magical thinking that ensues allows her to continue her life by entertaining the possibility of her husband's return. Profoundly moving without being overly sentimental.

The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains, by Thomas Laqueur - An epic study of mortal remains which traces human attitudes towards the dead from the Middle Ages to the present day. The book is impressively interdisciplinary drawing on sources ranging from medical tracts, songs, poems, novels, history and archeology. Necessary reading for anyone interested in human history, philosophy, ethics and how the dead continue to shape the lives of the living, even centuries later.

Mortality, by Christopher Hitchens - Hitchens's memoir about his struggle with esophageal cancer is a remarkably rich account of the difficulty of facing mortality and the questions about the afterlife that are raised by the prospect of death. One somewhat surprising aspect of this memoir is Hitchens's confidence in medicine, which seems at points to act as a surrogate for religion, and is particularly interesting given Hitchens's famous statements regarding his lack of belief in the existence of god.

Molloy, Malone Dies, the Unnameable: A Trilogy, by Samuel Beckett - One of the most memorable and comic portrayals of the process of dying in the novel tradition. The story follows Malone who is attempting to narrate his own demise, a task made impossible by the fact that he cannot establish whether he is living or dead. Instead he gives himself over to narrating stories to distract himself. Full of gallows humor and gloriously macabre.

After the Wake, by Brendan Behan - This short story, included in the collection of essays of the same name, is Behan at his most witty and humorous but the story also manages a wistful melancholy and mystery, combining all the element of the Irish wake. His last statements on the American appropriation of the wake are particularly cutting.

Graveyard Clay: Cré na Cille, by Máirtín Ó Cadhain - Originally published in Irish, this novel takes place in a small Irish graveyard where the dead talk and bicker with one another as if they still lived. One of the most famous and acclaimed Irish-language modernist novels, it has been recently translated into English by two different translators, both published by Yale University Press. Alan Titley's translation "The Dirty Dust" is more colorful and contemporary, with Titley putting his own spin on the language. The more literally titled "Graveyard Clay" translated by Liam Mac Con Iomaire and Tim Robinson is a more faithful translation and is slightly more restrained and subtle. Both make available the wonderful humor and innovation of O' Cadhain's prose, plunging readers into the social world of small town Irish life where petty grievances continue even beyond the grave.

About Laying Out the Bones: Death and Dying in the Modern Irish Novel: English sheds new light on death and dying in twentieth– and twenty–firstcentury Irish literature as she examines the ways that Irish wake and funeral rituals shape novelistic discourse. She argues that the treatment of death in Irish novels offers a way of making sense of mortality and provides insight into Ireland’s cultural and historical experience of death. Combining key concepts from narrative theory—such as readers’ competing desires for a story and for closure—with Irish cultural analyses and literary criticism, English performs astute close readings of death in select novels by Joyce, Beckett, Kate O’Brien, John McGahern, and Anne Enright. With each chapter, she demonstrates how novelistic narrative serves as a way of mediating between the physical facts of death and its lasting impact on the living. English suggests that while Catholic conceptions of death have always been challenged by alternative secular value systems, these systems have also struggled to find meaningful alternatives to the consolation offered by religious conceptions of the afterlife.