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In nationalist Ireland, definitions of family have traditionally followed a hetero-normative and sexist pattern whereby husbands and wives fulfilled deeply unequal roles. Moreover, the notion of family has been too often idealized as a site of peace and unconditional love, its members being united by unbreakable bonds of mutual affection. In Colm Tóibín's fiction, "traditional" families tend to be dysfunctional and the relations between their members become strained because of emotional distance, regrets and distrust. However, Tóibín's protagonists do find their sense of home and domesticity outside the traditional parameters of family. In this regard, this paper intends to analyze the manner in which Tóibín de-stabilizes canonical definitions through his revisionist agenda and his inscription of alternative forms of family. In order to shed light on these points, I shall refer to his novels The South (1990), The Heather Blazing (1992), The Blackwater Lightship (1999) and his short stories "A Long Winter" (Mothers and Sons, 2006), "Two Women" and "The Street" (The Empty Family, 2010). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to analyse the depiction of IRA female volunteers in Ann Devlin's "Naming the Names" (1986) and Anna Burns' No Bones (2001) and to consider the relationship established between gender and violence in these texts. I investigate the extent to which the female terrorists portrayed conform to the "mother, monster, whore" paradigm identified by Laura Sjoberg and Caron Gentry (2007) in their study of women's violence in global politics and consider what differences, if any, are established with these characters' male counterparts. The ways in which both authors destabilise traditional gender stereotypes is also explored, as is the question of whether these texts might be considered as feminist fictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]