A study of how English’s colonial history inflects the literary vernaculars of Anglo-Celtic modernists W. B. Yeats, Hugh MacDiarmid, and Marianne Moore.
Haunted English explores the role of language in colonization and decolonization by examining how Anglo-Celtic modernists W. B. Yeats, Hugh MacDiarmid, and Marianne Moore “de-Anglicize” their literary vernaculars. Laura O’Connor demonstrates how the poets’ struggles with and through the colonial tongue are discernible in their signature styles, using aspects of those styles to theorize the dynamics of linguistic imperialism—as both a distinct process and an integral part of cultural imperialism.
O’Connor argues that the advance of the English Pale and the accompanying translation of the receding Gaelic culture into a romanticized Celtic Fringe represents multilingual British culture as if it were exclusively English-speaking and yet registers, on a subliminal level, some of the cultural losses entailed by English-only Anglicization. Taking the fin-de-siècle movements of the Gaelic revival and the Irish Literary Renaissance as her point of departure, O’Connor examines the effort to undo cultural cringe through language and literary activism.
“This is a promising contribution to an expanding discipline.” —Paul Shanks, Comparative Literature Studies
“Laura O’Connor has written a distinguished and groundbreaking study.” —Murray Pittock, Clio
“Smart, engaging, and intellectually provocative.” —Rob Doggett, Victorian Studies
“An often brilliant account of how three modernist poetries contributed to the global decline of Anglocentrism . . . Essential for anyone looking for fresh interpretations of Yeats, MacDiarmid, or Moore, it will also interest readers concerned with the promises and challenges of writing transnational literary criticism.” —Matthew Hart, Modernism/Modernity
“Insightful, scintillating, attentive to every nuance . . . O’Connor’s study will reward greatly anyone interested in the critical revivalism that is both her subject and her inheritance.” —Gregory Castle, Irish Literary Supplement
“Valuable and original work that participates in some of the most exciting and forward-looking trends in current Irish and literary studies.” —Marjorie Howes, Boston College, author of Yeats’s Nations: Gender, Class, and Irishness

Laura O'Connor

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