Understanding Contemporary Irish Fiction and Drama

Margaret Hallissy

Description

A study of the key themes and events essential to understanding Irish fiction and drama

In Understanding Contemporary Irish Fiction and Drama, Margaret Hallissy examines the work of a cross-section of important Irish writers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries who are representative of essential issues and themes in the canon of contemporary Irish literature. Included are early figures John Millington Synge and James Joyce; dramatists Brian Friel, Conor McPherson, and Tom Murphy; and prize-winning contemporary fiction writers such as Edna O'Brien, Joseph O'Connor, William Trevor, Roddy Doyle, and Colum McCann.

Each chapter focuses on one significant representative piece of contemporary Irish fiction or drama by filling in its cultural, historical, and literary background. Hallissy identifies a key theme or key event in the Irish past essential to understanding the work. She then analyzes earlier literary compositions with the same theme and through a close reading of the contemporary work provides context for that background. The chapters are organized chronologically by relevant historical events, with thematic discussions interspersed. Background pieces were chosen for their places in Irish literature and the additional insight they provide into the featured works.

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• Idioma inglés
• Idioma galés
• Superiority (short story)
• Christy (novel)
• Penal Laws (Ireland)
• The Snapper (novel)
• Early Irish law
• Buile Shuibhne
• Irish fiction
• Irish literature
• Desperation
• Irish Republic
• Fionn mac Cumhaill
• Historical fiction
• Irish
• English
• Maeve Binchy
• European
• Welsh
• Scottish
• Seamus Heaney
• Musique irlandaise
• Anglais

Informations

• Publié par: University of South Carolina Press
• Date de parution: 01 août 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781611176636
• Langue: English

Extrait

Understanding Contemporary Irish Fiction and Drama
Understanding Modern European and Latin American Literature
James Hardin, Series Editor
volumes on
Ingeborg Bachmann
Christoph Hein
Samuel Beckett
Hermann Hesse
Juan Benet
Eug ne Ionesco
Thomas Bernhard
Uwe Johnson
Johannes Bobrowski
Milan Kundera
Roberto Bola o
Primo Levi
Heinrich B ll
John McGahern
Italo Calvino
Robert Musil
Albert Camus
Boris Pasternak
Elias Canetti
Octavio Paz
Camilo Jos Cela
Luigi Pirandello
C line
Marcel Proust
Julio Cort zar
Graciliano Ramos
Contemporary Irish Fiction and Drama
Erich Maria Remarque
Isak Dinesen
Alain Robbe-Grillet
Jos Donoso
Joseph Roth
Friedrich D rrenmatt
Jean-Paul Sartre
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
W. G. Sebald
Max Frisch
Claude Simon
Federico Garc a Lorca
Mario Vargas Llosa
Gabriel Garc a M rquez
Peter Weiss
Juan Goytisolo
Franz Werfel
G nter Grass
Christa Wolf
Gerhart Hauptmann
UNDERSTANDING
Contemporary Irish Fiction and Drama
Margaret Hallissy

The University of South Carolina Press
2016 University of South Carolina
Published by the University of South Carolina Press
Columbia, South Carolina 29208
www.sc.edu/uscpress
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data can be found at http://catalog.loc.gov/
ISBN 978-1-61117-662-9 (cloth)
ISBN 978-1-61117-663-6 (ebook)
Front cover photograph: istockphoto.com/Ingmar Wesemann
To Jack Mallon, Courtney Casey, and Gracie Mallon looking forward
Contents
Series Editor s Preface
Introduction
1. Nothing can happen nowhere : A Place in the World
2. Just Tell Them the Story: Tradition Bearing
3. The abuse of language : Irish, English, American
4. An Gorta M r: Hunger as Reality and Metaphor
5. Terrible beauty : The Easter Rising
6. The Big House: Symbol and Target
7. Fanatic heart : A Legacy of Violence
8. Lots of fun at Finnegan s Wake : The Drinking Life
9. But come ye back : The Yank
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Series Editor s Preface
Understanding Modern European and Latin American Literature has been planned as a series of guides for undergraduate and graduate students and nonacademic readers. Like the volumes in its companion series Understanding Contemporary American Literature , these books provide introductions to the lives and writings of prominent modern authors and explicate their most important works.
Modern literature makes special demands, and this is particularly true of foreign literature, in which the reader must contend not only with unfamiliar, often arcane artistic conventions and philosophical concepts, but also with the handicap of reading the literature in translation. It is a truism that the nuances of one language can be rendered in another only imperfectly (and this problem is especially acute in fiction), but the fact that the works of European and Latin American writers are situated in a historical and cultural setting quite different from our own can be as great a hindrance to the understanding of these works as the linguistic barrier. For this reason the UMELL series emphasizes the sociological and historical background of the writers treated. The philosophical and cultural traditions peculiar to a given culture may be particularly important for an understanding of certain authors, and these are taken up in the introductory chapter and also in the discussion of those works to which this information is relevant. Beyond this, the books treat the specifically literary aspects of the author under discussion and attempt to explain the complexities of contemporary literature lucidly. The books are conceived as introductions to the authors covered, not as comprehensive analyses. They do not provide detailed summaries of plot because they are meant to be used in conjunction with the books they treat, not as a substitute for study of the original works. The purpose of the books is to provide information and judicious literary assessment of the major works in the most compact, readable form. It is our hope that the UMELL series will help increase knowledge and understanding of European and Latin American cultures and will serve to make the literature of those cultures more accessible.
J. H.
Introduction
It all begins with the land. Upon it, the characters live and move and have their being. In fiction and drama, where action happens is intricately bound up with what happens, to whom, because of whom, and why. Setting explains, literally, where the characters are coming from. Unlike the United States, whose vast tracts of underpopulated land often served as both a magnet for the adventurous and a safety valve for the malcontent, Ireland is a place of, in William Butler Yeats s words, little room. From at least the sixteenth century, the question of who owned the land, and by what right, underlies all of Ireland s history and much of its literature. Landowners, predominantly British in origin and Anglican in religion, dominated the native Celts for generations, leaving behind a heritage of resentment which persisted even after landholding arrangements had changed. The confinement of the lower classes to the smaller, less fertile, less desirable plots of land, which they had little time to cultivate because of their duty work on the landlord s land, led directly to the Irish dependence on the potato as the main, and often the only, element of the diet. So it was that, when the potato crop failed in 1845, mass starvation and mass emigration robbed the land of its inhabitants.
Whether in times of famine or relative prosperity, regions of Ireland in which the plays or fiction are set bear their own symbolic freight. A major dichotomy exists in Irish writing between the city and the country. Here there are similarities to the United States, wherein in some political circles the non-coastal, non-urban sections of the country are described as, and apparently believed by some to be, the heartland. A similar notion of the country in Ireland, as being closer than the city to pure, authentic, Irish values, also prevails. The countryside, particularly the remote areas in the west, is perceived as less contaminated by contact with the modern world, more traditional in values. The city is seen as the locus of worldly values, but also of accomplishment of all sorts: educational, economic, artistic. City folk see themselves as sophisticated, worldly-wise, Europeanized and/or Americanized, open to change and to cultural diversity. Urbanites scorn the culchies, rural people, who scorn the urbanites in turn.
Another great spatial divide is that between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The relationship of Ireland to England is a long and, to the Republican supporter of Irish independence, sad tale. The term Republican in Irish political discourse is unrelated to the Republican Party in the United States; an Irish Republican is one who advocates for or approves of separation from the United Kingdom. Since 1922 the larger portion of Ireland has achieved its separationist goal and is indeed a separate country from Northern Ireland, which remains part of the United Kingdom. This division of an island that is so small to begin with has political, social, economic, and religious consequences. Although at the time of this writing (2015) relative peace prevails, hostilities have simmered for years, erupting sporadically into violence. At issue is the continuing existence of two separate countries on one island, with all the historical memory that arrangement involves.
Collective memory is preserved and transmitted via storytelling. The storytelling custom arose in the countryside as community entertainment during the long, dark winter nights before electrification introduced other absorbing, but isolating, forms of entertainment. Storytelling customs survive in modern Irish literature in the form of episodes in fiction and drama. When any play, short story, or novel, Irish or not, incorporates a smaller narrative into the larger narrative, this story-within-the-story poses technical issues requiring close literary analysis: the relationship of the two narratives to each other, and the suitability of the particular tale to the particular teller and audience. In an Irish work, the tale-telling situation also connects both teller and tale to a long and strong tradition. The Irish custom preserved and transmitted the community s sense of its own history, sometimes a family s, sometimes the tribe s. At the same time, the paradoxical secretiveness of an otherwise loquacious people is often demonstrated in stories not told, in crucial details suppressed, in questions that beg to be answered but are not.
Traditionally, folk tales were told in the native language; thus the storytelling tradition is intimately bound up with the fate of the Irish language in Ireland. Language in Ireland, like land ownership, is a contentious issue, pitting the language of the natives against that of the conquerors, and exacerbating tensions between the two groups. In an effort to maintain their cultural identity, the Irish long resisted the suppression of their language. But as in the United States, knowledge of English opened doors of opportunity. The advantages to the Irish of mastering a language that provided access not only to British culture but to other English-speaking countries had to be weighed against the loss of a key component of Irish culture.
Historical events moved