John Banville (Contemporary Irish Writers). Murphy, Murphy, 9781684485482 New**

Bucknell University Press,U.S.

John BanvilleAuthor(s): Neil Murphy\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Bucknell University Press,U.S., United States\nImprint: Bucknell University Press,U.S.\nISBN-13: 9781684485482, 978-1684485482\nSynopsis\nJohn Banvilleoffers a close analysis of most of Banvilles major novels, his Quirke crime novels, and his dramatic adaptations of Heinrich von Kleists plays. Banvilles work has been marked by an embedded discourse about the significance of art and by a concurrent self-consciousness of its own status as art. His novels perpetually reveal an overt fascination with the visual arts, in particular, and with the aesthetic principle of literature as art. This study asserts that, as a whole, Banvilles work presents an elaborate and richly textured coded account of his relationship with art and with the self-referential fictional world that his novels conjure. It is from this critical context thatJohn Banvilles central argument is derived: that his fiction can be viewed as an extended interro.