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VIADUCT Trauma and Representation in Three Irish Novels

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VIADUCT Trauma and Representation in Three Irish Novels VIADUCT and Trauma and Representation in Three Irish Novels A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities 2020 Mariah I H Whelan School of Arts, Languages and Cultures CONTENTS Abstract 4 Declaration & Copyright Statement 5 Acknowledgements 6 VIADUCT Notes on the Poems 8 I. Sylvia September 11 Necessary Maintenance 12 The Piano 13 3-6 Months 14 March 15 Wound 1968 16 February 17 Mother 1962 18 Brother 1961 19 Pigs 20 Fox Studies I 23 House of Light 24 Fox Studies II 25 Grabbing a Coffee with Friends 26 October 28 II. Girl History Lessons 30 Boyfriend I 34 Night Drive 35 Four Deaths 37 Cheyne Stokes 38 In the Staff Room 39 Geography Lessons 40 Ashes 43 Hunger 44 Fossils 48 Information Point 49 Viaduct 50 Hefted 51 Village 52 Boyfriend II 56 Wood 57 Threads 58 Tarot/Death 59 III. Michael Act One Scene One: Night 68 Act One Scene Two: Morning 73 Act One Scene Three: Rain 78 2 Entr’acte 83 Act Two Scene One: Evening 84 Trauma and Representation in Three Irish Novels Introduction 90 Trauma and Representation 99 James Joyce, the ‘Nightmare’ of History and the Hibernicization of the Novel 104 Chapter One: Traumatic Geography and Transgenerational Trauma in Seamus Deane’s Reading in the Dark 117 Seamus Deane, ‘Field Day’ and the Traumatic Topography of London/Derry 121 Transgenerational Trauma and the Search for ‘Truth’ in Reading in the Dark 127 Linguistic Loss, Silence and Traumatic Knowledge in Reading in the Dark 137 Conclusions 143 Chapter Two: The Traumatised Body in Anne Enright’s The Gathering 146 Anne Enright, Traumatised Bodies and Testimony in The Gathering 150 Personal Trauma and the National Context 161 The Gathering and the Joycean Legacy 171 Conclusions 173 Chapter Three: Trauma and the Sense-making Body in Eimear McBride’s A Girl is a Half-formed Thing 176 Trauma, the Body and Narrative in A Girl is a Half-formed Thing 180 Traumatic Sexuality and the Brother-Sister Relationship 192 Trauma, Cyclicality and the Joycean Legacy 202 Conclusions 210 Conclusions 212 Bibliography 217 Total Word Count: 56, 757 3 ABSTRACT This submission is comprised of two parts: a creative thesis titled Viaduct and a critical thesis titled ‘Trauma and Representation in Three Irish Novels’. While each is designed to stand independent of the other, over the past four years of writing and research there has naturally been some dialogue between the two. Both theses share a preoccupation with ideas of history, memory and expression. They are interested in how to represent experiences in the past that are forcefully felt in the present and yet often resist conventional notions of language, time and space. I. Viaduct Viaduct is a collection of poems that interrogates the intersection of personal experience and family history. The collection is divided into three sections each written in the voice of one of three personae who inhabit the book: Sylvia, Girl and Michael. Sylvia is a woman in her mid- sixties, sister to Michael and aunt of Girl. Girl is a woman in her thirties, niece of Sylvia and daughter of Michael. Michael is a man in his seventies, brother of Sylvia and father of Girl. The poems are interested in how the shared past has shaped these characters’ lives in both the past and the present. They grapple with themes of landscape and recollection, the body as a house of memory and the difficulty of expressing in language a history that is hedged in uncertainty and doubt. To access this past, the poems experiment with different formal strategies, exploring material culture as a stand in for the mourned body and the formal side-steps necessary to explore difficult sibling and parent-child relationships. II. Trauma and Representation in Three Irish Novels Since its inception in 2013, many Irish writers have been shortlisted for or won The Goldsmiths Prize for innovative fiction. Questioned about this phenomenon, Eimear McBride speculated that their success could be explained by the formal innovations necessary to accommodate the Irish language within the English prose novel. In thesis, I explore the innovations made in three Irish novels to not only accommodate the trace of the Irish language but Irish experience more generally. I argue that Seamus Deane’s Reading in the Dark, Anne Enright’s The Gathering and Eimear McBride’s A Girl is a Half-formed Thing all participate in a legacy of formal innovation initiated by James Joyce. Departing from the conventions of the nineteenth-century realist novel, in his increasingly experimental texts Joyce sought to better map the traumatic impact of colonial history and discourse on the Irish subject. Positing the three texts by Deane, Enright and McBride as ‘trauma novels’, I argue that the novels take Joyce’s pattern of formal innovation as their common foundation. I argue that in Reading in the Dark, the novel’s linear narrative trajectory is deliberately installed only to be interrupted by transgenerational traumas that foreground Northern Ireland’s unresolved histories and ongoing political animosities. In my analysis of The Gathering, I posit that the traumatised body plays a key role in expressing Ireland’s ongoing history of misogyny. In my final chapter I contend that in A Girl is a Half-formed Thing the novel’s treatment of a traumatised narrative voice enacts a model of traumatic Irish girlhood that is ongoing and cyclical. While each text is different, I argue that they all rework the anglophone novel to enact the experience of traumatic Irish histories that are deeply complex, difficult to retrieve in language and always left unresolved. 4 DECLARATION No portion of the work referred to in the thesis has been submitted in support of an application for another degree or qualification of this or any other university or other institute of learning COPYRIGHT STATEMENT I. The author of this thesis (including any appendices and/or schedules to this thesis) owns certain copyright or related rights in it (the “Copyright”) and she has given The University of Manchester certain rights to use such Copyright, including for administrative purposes. II. Copies of this thesis, either in full or in extracts and whether in hard or electronic copy, may be made only in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended) and regulations issued under it or, where appropriate, in accordance with licensing agreements which the University has from time to time. This page must form part of any such copies made. III. The ownership of certain Copyright, patents, designs, trademarks and other intellectual property (the “Intellectual Property”) and any reproductions of copyright works in the thesis, for example graphs and tables (“Reproductions”), which may be described in this thesis, may not be owned by the author and may be owned by third parties. Such Intellectual Property and Reproductions cannot and must not be made available for use without the prior written permission of the owner(s) of the relevant Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions. IV. Further information on the conditions under which disclosure, publication and commercialisation of this thesis, the Copyright and any Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions described in it may take place is available in the University IP Policy (see http://documents.manchester.ac.uk/DocuInfo.aspx?DocID=2442 0), in any relevant Thesis restriction declarations deposited in the University Library, The University Library’s regulations (see http://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/about/ regulations/) and in The University’s policy on Presentation of Theses. 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you to my supervisors Vona Groarke and Liam Harte for guiding this project from its inception to completion. I am grateful for your careful and generous readings of my poetry and critical writing, your unfailing support despite your many commitments and for signposting me to opportunities beyond the PhD. I am also grateful to my third supervisor Jerome de Groot for his input in the bi-annual panel review process. Many thanks also to John Mcauliffe, Kaye Mitchell and all the staff at the Centre for New Writing for creating a rich and supportive atmosphere in which to work. Particular thanks to the staff of the Graduate School (especially Julie Fiwka, Joanne Marsh and Amanda Matthews) for offering unwavering practical support and advice. I cannot thank my fellow students at the University of Manchester enough for all their support and feedback over the past four years. My especial thanks go to Fatema Abdoolcarim, Imogen Durant, Charlotte Haines, Tessa Harris, David Hartley, Rebecca Hurst and Usma Malik. Your friendship and support have been invaluable. Thanks are also due to a great many people outside the university who have supported my critical and creative work. These include: Hana Bressler, Joe Carrick Varty, Tom de Freston, Niall Munro, Pablo de Orellana, Maya C. Popa and Gaby Sambuccetti. Thanks also to friends who have provided essential moral support including: Kimberly Aono, May Chung, Caroline Cook, Maria C. Goodson, Alice Herring, Alex and Amanda Macgregor and Bernadine Nixon. I am grateful to the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures at The University of Manchester for the funding award that made this thesis financially possible. I am also grateful to the Department of War Studies at King’s College London and the Economic and Social Research Council for two funded residencies that helped me to develop this thesis, particularly the ‘Michael’ section of Viaduct. Special thanks go to my family for providing the love and support that is the foundation of everything I do. Thank you to my husband Paul Austin for managing our domestic, financial and family life so that I can go and sit alone in my office for days on end and work.
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