To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the screening of The Quiet Man, Cork
University Press has published this book in the Ireland into Film series.

The Quiet Man by Luke Gibbons
Series editors: Keith Hopper (text), Gráinne Humphreys (images)

John Ford's The Quiet Man (1952) is the most popular cinematic
representation of Ireland, and one of Hollywood's classic romantic comedies.
For some viewers and critics the film is a powerful evocation of romantic
Ireland and the search for home; for others, it is a showcase for the worst
stereotypes of stage-Irishry. Much of Irish cinema since the development of
an indigenous film industry in the 1980s has set its face firmly against
these mythic images of Ireland, but no film has yet attained the enduring
appeal of The Quiet Man.

In this radical reappraisal of Ford's Oscar-winning film, Luke Gibbons
traces its development from Maurice Walsh's original story (1933) and argues
that its romantic excesses are a symptom of much darker undercurrents in the
literary text, and the displacement of trauma that often underlies
nostalgia. Moreover, Gibbons ably demonstrates how the film, rather than
indulging in escapism, actually questions its own romantic illusions and the
dream of returning to an Irish paradise lost.

Luke Gibbons is Professor of English, and Film, Television and Theatre, at
the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. He is the author of Transformations
in Irish Culture (Cork University Press, 1996), and co-author of Cinema and
Ireland (Routledge, 1988).

For further details go to http://www.corkuniversitypress.com


Mike Collins

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Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the
University of Alabama: http://www.tcf.ua.edu