‘The Transnational Irish Novel’ explores a recent phenomenon in contemporary Irish fiction; the increasing prevalence of Irish novels that are set wholly, or substantially, outside of Ireland, which is referred to as ‘transnational fiction’. Central to the argument is the concept of focalisation. For instance, while a novel such as Colm Tóibín’s Brooklyn (2009) is set largely in the United States, the narrative is focalised by an Irish character, and thus more fully resembles a novel of migration. By contrast, Tóibín’s The Master (2004) does not involve Irish focalisation. Similarly, there are works by Colum McCann, Joseph O’Connor, and Sebastian Barry in which a specifically Irish focalisation diminishes; or, in Anne Enright’s The Green Road (2015), where it is dispersed. Ultimately, it is argued that this tendency towards the dispersal and even the dismissal of a distinctively Irish perspective is a feature of Irish fiction in a globalised world.

Chapter 6 analyses the ironies of multi-scalar focalisation. I read Margaret Atwood’s ‘Torching the Dusties’ (2014), T. C. Boyle’s The Terranauts (2016), and Ali Smith’s Winter (2017) as ironic exercises in ‘bringing the biosphere home’ which satirise their focalisers’ limited perception. The difficulty of biosphere perception is highlighted in each of these texts through visual hallucinations and blind spots, which represent ethical failure. These stories respond satirically to the difficulty of perceiving a planetary ecological crisis, and question the idea of enlightenment as a step towards environmental responsibility. This fiction does not work didactically, but neither does it endorse the cynical perspective. Instead, it explores an ironic mode of multi-scalar attention which holds together incompatible perspectives. This leads me to define scalar irony as an epistemic and ethical tool which offers a way forward for Anthropocene response-ability.

Chapter II reconstructs the complex frame narrative underlying The Lord of the Rings, according to which Tolkien came into possession of an old book, which allegedly included stories from an ancient past of the world and was written by three authors of Hobbit race; the book was soon supplemented by a large bulk of miscellaneous material, and was later heavily edited, through a process whose last stage was Tolkien’s own compilation and translation. The second part investigates the theoretical implications of this meta-textual frame. Some of these are related to Tolkien’s mythopoetic ambition and urgency for narrative ‘realism’; others reflect important aspects of the literary fabric of the novel, including its Hobbito-centrism, as regards both focalisation and themes. More deeply, the meta-textual frame allows Tolkien to express and self-reflect on his own experience as a writer, who perceived his stories as something ‘other’ from him, ‘given’ or ‘discovered’, and free from the control of his rational mind.