Bernard MacLaverty: New Critical Readings

Bernard MacLaverty explores the five short story collections and four novels by this Northern Ireland-born author through a series of close readings set against the backdrop of Northern Irish history and culture that draw on aesthetic and ethical theories by Bakhtin, Adorno, and Lukacs, along with theories of beauty by Denis Donoghue and Elaine Scarry. The first phase of MacLaverty's work is visual, epitomized by his 1983 novel ""Cal"", while the second, musical phase, reaches its apotheosis in his Booker Prize short-listed novel ""Grace Notes"" (1997). The current phase, beginning with his novel ""The Anatomy School"" (2001), returns to the visual. The visual and sonic trajectories of his fiction are employed by MacLaverty in the context of his dialectic between imprisonment and freedom, as early work featuring literal and psychic imprisonment gives way to later fiction that features characters that cross personal, familial, and national boundaries through freely choosing loving relationships. Richard Rankin Russell is Associate Professor of English Literature at Baylor University.