Ruins and Cultural Memory in Literary Representations of Ireland, 1916
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Ruins and Cultural Memory in Literary Representations of Ireland, 1916–1945 Harriet Induni Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of English May 2019 2 This candidate confirms that the work submitted is her own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. © 2019 The University of Leeds and Harriet Induni The right of Harriet Induni to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988. 3 Acknowledgements My sincere thanks are due to Professor John McLeod, who oversaw what has been a long and adventurous academic journey with kindness, intellect, and unending patience. I could not have wished for a more supportive and engaged supervisor. I have been lucky enough to meet and learn from many brilliant minds in three universities over the past 9 years. Particular thanks go to Paul Delaney at Trinity College Dublin, who introduced me to several novels which proved the genesis of this thesis. I am indebted to Viktor Doychinov for letting me pretend to be an engineer in order to print this, and to Charlotte Bentley for providing French translations. Thank you to my parents Bruce and Lizzie, and my brother Allan, who offered much advice and aid. From providing financial incentives to start reading when I was young (a penny a page – I will claim the debt one day) up to the day of submitting, you have been there for me unfailingly, and I’m decidedly grateful. Sara Brio and Carla Douglas, along with the Leeds postgraduate community, have provided reassurance and practical assistance in hours of need. The same can be said of a wider circle of friends, not least Kate Dunstone, for keeping me company in the library, Drew Edwards, for encouragement and conversation provided both tipsy and sober, and Felipe Fazenda, for intellectual stimulation, video gaming recommendations, and an invaluable discussion of Foucault which lasted well into the early hours. I’m also most grateful to Antoinette and Michael, who lent me a sofa and a spare Persian cat during trips to Ireland. This thesis is dedicated to my grandparents, with love and memory. 4 Abstract This thesis analyses forms of ruin within literary representations of Ireland between 1916 and 1945. I examine how novels, short stories, and life writing set during these years use ruin as a source of active reflection on Irish history and culture. The texts in question can be understood as resistant contributions to Irish cultural memory – a term I use to denote the diverse social sites within which remembrance of the past is practiced and developed. I focus on the work of J. G. Farrell (Troubles), Elizabeth Bowen (The Last September, Bowen’s Court), William Trevor (Fools of Fortune, The Story of Lucy Gault), Sebastian Barry (The Secret Scripture), Seán Ó Faoláin (‘Midsummer Night Madness’, ‘A Broken World’), and Máirtín Ó Cadhain (Cré na Cille), arguing that each author mobilises ruin to intervene in problematic narratives of the past. The history in question is firstly Ireland’s revolutionary period and the fate of the Anglo-Irish ‘Big House’ during this time; secondly, the insular and damaged conditions within post-independence statehood; and finally, the pressures placed upon the Free State’s nationalistic insularity by the global ruin of World War II. I coin the term ‘radical decay’ to describe how fragmentation, damage, and degeneration are deployed in order to resist ingrained cultural values and perceptions of history. Ruins are records of the past characterised by absences and flux, which result in semiotic ambiguity. The writers discussed here embrace this ambiguity to unsettle historical meaning, and so resist calcified practices and manipulative agendas within Irish heritage. Ruin appears as a heterogeneous substance within these texts. It is present in the narratives regarding damaged buildings, including the torched Big Houses of 5 the Ascendancy, as a decaying asylum within the Free State, and in sites of abandonment or neglect in a destitute rural landscape. Ruin is also portrayed as a textual and personal condition. Using radical decay as a conceptual foundation for my analysis, I will show how each form of ruin is represented in Irish literature to provoke resistant renegotiations of cultural memory. 6 Contents List of Illustrations ...................................................................................................... 8 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 9 1. Opening: The Work of ‘Radical Decay’ ................................................................... 9 2. Heritage and Hegemonic Practice in Irish Culture ............................................ 19 4. Fragmented Imaginations: The Ruin as Resistance ............................................ 34 5. ‘Irresistible decay’: Historical Consciousness in Transience ............................ 40 6. Discomposed Voices: Ruin as a Textual and Human Condition ....................... 51 Chapter 1. Revolution and the Big House ................................................................ 59 Going to Pieces: Troubling Perspectives on the Majestic’s Road to Ruin ............. 59 1. ‘Blinding Magnificence’: Ruin out of Control...................................................... 59 2. The Worst Tour Guide: Documenting the Majestic’s Remains ........................ 64 3. ‘Reality as hard as granite’: Farrell’s Writing in Ruins ....................................... 73 4. Taking Things in Hand: Tangible Encounters with the Majestic .................... 84 ‘A world all to itself’: The Presence of Ruin in The Last September ......................... 99 1. Dividing Lines: The Ruin of Anglo-Irish Heritage ............................................. 99 2. ‘Splintered darkness’: Ruin as a Hostile Incursion ............................................ 105 3. Preserving Revelations .......................................................................................... 111 4. Trouble at t’Mill: The Nightmare of Lost Meaning .......................................... 121 Ruin and Nationalism in Ó Faoláin’s Political Fiction ......................................... 131 1. Greener Grass and Softer Rain: Nationalist Fictions ........................................ 131 2. Pity and Hate: The Dissident Force of Ruin ...................................................... 137 3. Hospitality in Decay .............................................................................................. 141 4. ‘Part of Ireland’: The Ruin as Common Ground ................................................ 154 Chapter 2. William Trevor’s Landscapes of Ruin .................................................. 158 ‘Nothing went away’: Enduring Memory in Fools of Fortune ................................. 158 1. ‘Will we tackle a bit of history?’: Ireland’s Ruined Past ................................... 158 2. ‘The shadows of destruction’: A Melancholic Relationship with Ruin .......... 162 3. Human Ruin after Kilneagh’s Destruction ......................................................... 170 4. Ruining Narratives of Nation ............................................................................... 176 5. The Melancholic Ruin and the Tourist Site ....................................................... 185 ‘Ireland of the ruins’: The Story of Lucy Gault ......................................................... 189 1. Immaterial History................................................................................................. 189 2. A Wider Landscape of Ruin .................................................................................. 192 7 3. The (N)ever Ruined Big House ............................................................................ 202 4. Lahardane’s (Absent) Historical Context ........................................................... 208 5. Ruin as a Revelation .............................................................................................. 213 Chapter 3. Degeneration in a Free State ................................................................ 220 ‘A Broken World’: Stasis and Decay in Post-Independence Cultural Geography220 1. The Free State ‘full of ruins’ ................................................................................. 220 2. ‘Then there was emigration’: An Abandoned World ........................................ 225 3. ‘The good land’: Stasis and Decay ....................................................................... 230 4. The Uncrossed Threshold .................................................................................... 242 5. The Ruined Priest .................................................................................................. 248 Ruin as Revelation in Sebastian Barry’s The Secret Scripture ................................ 258 1. Part of the Landscape ........................................................................................... 258 2. Archives of Ruin .................................................................................................... 262 3. Roscommon Hospital: Decay as Revelation, Ruin as Resistance .................... 267 4. A Ruined Space of Memory .................................................................................