Câmpus de São José do Rio Preto Fernando Aparecido Poiana A intersecção entre literatura, memória e história em Reading in the Dark, de Seamus Deane São José do Rio Preto 2015 Fernando Aparecido Poiana A intersecção entre literatura, memória e história em Reading in the Dark, de Seamus Deane Dissertação apresentada ao Instituto de Biociências, Letras e Ciências Exatas da Universidade Estadual Paulista “Julio de Mesquita Filho”, Campus de São José do Rio Preto, para a obtenção do título de Mestre em Letras (Área de concentração: Teoria e Estudos Literários). Orientador: Prof. Dr. Peter James Harris São José do Rio Preto – SP 2015 !" #$%& %'() * + ! , - ./01 2 3!4 5 6 78 9:; <:2= %; /">>/, ?# /, ?@; A %BA$ < ? 8, ! 8801 2 C!4 5 6 C8 9:; <:2=888D? <0/E#$-A%&.$B F) G 9G 898;<2 0H2 <I !" COMISSÃO EXAMINADORA TITULARES Prof. Dr. Peter James Harris – Orientador Prof. Dr. Alvaro Luiz Hattnher Profa. Dra. Laura Patricia Zuntini de Izarra SUPLENTES Prof. Dr. Márcio Scheel Prof. Dra. Carla Alexandra Ferreira For my parents Euclides and Isildinha, who have always been unconditionally by my side in my darkest hours. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I must begin by thanking Professor Dr. Peter James Harris for agreeing to supervise my work, and for having always encouraged me with his unswerving academic support, genuine commitment and long-standing friendship. I am also very grateful to Professor Dr. Nilce Maria Pereira, for being in the qualification exam, and to Professors Dr. Álvaro Luiz Hattnher and Dr. Márcio Scheel, for agreeing to be both in the qualification exam and in the oral defense. I must also express my gratitude to Professors Dr. Laura Patricia Zuntini de Izarra and Dr. Carla Alexandra Ferreira for kindly accepting the invitation to participate in the oral defense of this dissertation. Thanks also to Professor Dr. Derek Hand for his classes on the Irish Novel in the Celtic Tiger Period, at USP, in 2013, and for his serious reading of my final essay for that course. Many thanks to Professors Dr. Arnaldo Franco Junior, Dr. Claudia Maria Ceneviva Nigro, Dr. Giséle Manganelli Fernandes, Dr. Marize Mattos Dall’Aglio Hattnher, and Dr. Domingos Nunez for their classes at the PPG-Letras, at UNESP, which have contributed to the theoretical and methodological development of this study. Many thanks also to Prof. Dr. Orlando Nunes de Amorim, for his excellent course on Walter Benjamin, back in 2008. I gratefully thank my friends from Luigi e os Pirandellos for allowing me to play music with them. I wish to extend my gratitude to Lenon Perez Gonçalves for his invaluable help with the German language. Thanks also to Fernando Luis de Morais, Karen Augusto, Henrique Munhoz, Hallison Parro, Teucle M. Neto, Adolfo Ferraz, Michelle C. Buzani, Clarissa Picolo, Thatiane M. Zenardi, Higor Sampaio, Regiane R. Roda, Winnie Wounters, and Marisa Clara for the funny and fruitful discussions in the past few years. Thanks also to the Post Graduation Office staff for handling all the bureaucratic matters so competently. My deepest debt, as ever, is to the dedicatees of this study, who are my richest source of support and inspiration. I also owe many heartfelt thanks to Karina, who is my pride and joy, and personal Proust pundit, for her support and wishful thinking. Last but certainly not least, I must express my deep gratitude to CAPES for fully funding my research. I wish I knew what they Were saying. I’m never sure What it is I hear. (‘Rumours’ – Seamus Deane) TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction…………………………………………………………………......….p.10 1. History as Inquiry, or an Exercise in Reading in the Dark……………….....p. 22 1.1. A Brief Overview of Irish history in the XX Century………...….....p. 27 1.1.1. The Easter Rising 1916…………………………………..………....p. 32 1.1.2. The Anglo-Irish War (1919-1921)……………………………….....p. 37 1.1.3. The Irish Civil War (1922-1923)……………………………….......p. 42 1.1.4. The Troubles, o the Northern Irish Conflict (1968-1998)………...p. 47 1.1.5. The Rise and Fall of the Celtic Tiger…………………………...….p. 53 2. The Irish Novel and Irish History……………………………………………...p. 59 2.1. Seamus Deane: the Critic, the Poet, the Novelist………….….……..p. 65 2.2. Seamus Deane’s Reading in the Dark and the critics………..............p. 69 3. Language, Remembrance, Experience, History……………........….................p. 83 4. Whatever you Say, Say Nothing: Memory, Ghosts and Family Secrets…....p. 102 5. ‘The story ran like this…’: Rumours, Stories, and Irish History....................p. 126 6. Final Considerations..……………………………………………….…….…...p. 149 7. Bibliographical References…………………………………………………....p. 157 8. Appendix: An Interview with Seamus Deane………………………….…….p. 166 A intersecção entre literatura, memória e história em Reading in the Dark, de Seamus Deane RESUMO Este estudo analisa a intersecção entre literatura, memória e história em Reading in the Dark, de Seamus Deane. Para tanto, ele utiliza as noções de memória, experiência e história de Walter Benjamin, e discute a hipótese de que há uma intersecção entre literatura e história no romance de Deane que é criada pelo uso que é feito da memória como procedimento narrativo central. A análise dos elementos estéticos desse romance em paralelo com o contexto histórico a partir do qual ele é escrito e com o qual ele dialoga revelará no fim que a história é um elemento intrínseco em Reading in the Dark, de modo que a ficção de Deane comporta uma dimensão ao mesmo tempo estética e ética. Palavras-chave: Seamus Deane; Literatura e História; Ficção Irlandesa Contemporânea. The Intersection between Literature, Memory and History in Seamus Deane’s Reading in the Dark ABSTRACT This study analyses the intersection between literature, memory and history in Seamus Deane’s Reading in the Dark. To do so, it uses Walter Benjamin’s notions of memory, experience and history, and discusses the hypothesis that there is an intersection between literature and history in Deane’s novel that is created by the use it makes of memory as its central narrative procedure. The analysis of the aesthetic elements of this novel in parallel with the historical context out of which it is written and with which it establishes a dialogue will reveal in the end that history is an intrinsic feature of Reading in the Dark, in a way that Deane’s fiction has not only an aesthetic but also an ethical dimension to it. Keywords: Seamus Deane; Literature and History; Irish Contemporary Fiction. 10 INTRODUCTION The relationship between private experience and wider social, economic and cultural change still remains a strikingly unanswered question in Ireland. This is at least partly due to the fact that “the last thirty years have undoubtedly been a time of rapid and concentrated transition within Irish society and culture” (HAND, 2012, p. 254), and partly due to the long history of political unrest, grinding poverty, and sectarian rivalry between Catholics and Protestants that were deeply intensified in Ireland in the twentieth century. Indeed, the last thirty years saw the escalation of paramilitary violence, mainly in Northern Ireland, the agreement to ceasefire in the 1990s, and along with it, the economic boom that seemed to have transformed Ireland into a promising country, but that only proved a huge economic fiasco when the bubble burst in 2007 with the credit crunch worldwide. The rapid and concentrated transitions that Hand mentions had a dramatic impact on the way the Irish people viewed themselves. This is so because suddenly all the categories by which the Irish defined themselves seemed to have been challenged, and the history of poverty and political unrest that had affected the island for centuries. Religion, always a major element in Irish life, lost its influence on people’s decisions, and even though the church was still there, it had no power over peoples’ lives any longer, which in turn suggested a deep change in the moral realm as well. Besides, the impact of the process of decolonisation in the island has been dramatic, and the debilitating effects of the acts of violence perpetrated by unionists and nationalists are still deeply felt in both sides of the border. That such a small place has had to conciliate strongly dissenting opinions, as well as historical perspectives and interpretations only aggravates the social and political uncertainties which have arisen over the years. In addition, the country’s geographical proximity with England has sharply intensified the Irish people’s need and struggle for self-identification. Indeed, “so traumatic was the rearrangement of relations with Great Britain and so powerful the emotions and beliefs needed to negotiate those changes, that the revolutionary period maintained a hold on the Irish imagination long after 1922” (SMYTH, 1997, p. 3). The revolutionary period Smyth refers to is the Irish fight for independence, which gained full momentum with the Anglo-Irish War and that resulted in the partition of the country. As will be explained later on, with independence came partition, and with 11 partition a civil war that intensified the ideological divisions, fuelled by a past of colonial oppression on the one side, and the will to pursue liberation from this oppression at any cost on the other. In that scenario, the novel as a literary genre has achieved a position of special prominence, given its capacity to embody the vicissitudes of the Irish circumstances, which is particularly evident in its potential to hold apparently irreconcilable contradictions and antagonisms. Indeed, “the novel is important in modern Irish culture because as a genre it evolved to formulate narratives in which social, political and historical change could be accommodated” (SMYTH, 1997, p. 6). In other words, the novel, given its capacity and flexibility to incorporate elements from different narrative genres and modes, provided the aesthetic conditions for these social, political, and historical narratives to be used as the raw material for fictional composition.