George Moore and the autogenous self : the autobiography and fiction /

Literary historians remember George Moore chiefly for his association with Lady Gregory, J.M. Synge, and W.B. Yeats. Yeats said the acquisition of the Abbey Theatre in 1904 "could not have been done without Moore's knowledge of the stage." Grubgeld's splendid new study explores the autobiographical component of Moore's fiction, including the novels Parnell and His Island (1887), Hail and Farewell (a trilogy, 1911-14, 1925), Esther Waters (1894), and Confessions of a Young Man (1888). Grubgeld asserts that Moore tried to escape the suffocating Catholicism and Victorianism of Ireland by reinventing himself many times over through metafictions. Repudiating his past and subverting the authenticity of memory, Moore paid homage to the defining forces of social class, personality, gender, culture, and economics. Moore's interest in sex roles allowed him to experiment with male and female psychology, revitalizing the novel form. Moore's need to imaginatively escape Ireland allowed him to forge his principle of self-creation, his "autogenous self"--an aesthetically pure, instinctive force. He wrote in a letter that " ... art has no other end but to make life possible, to help us to live." Of interest to specialists in modern fiction, Irish literature, Victorian literature, autobiography, and gender studies. Graduate; faculty. J. L. Thorndike; Lakeland College