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The Formation of Musical Communities in Twentieth Century Irish Literature

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The Formation of Musical Communities in Twentieth Century Irish Literature The Formation of Musical Communities in Twentieth Century Irish Literature Author: Rebecca Louise Troeger Persistent link: http://hdl.handle.net/2345/3837 This work is posted on eScholarship@BC, Boston College University Libraries. Boston College Electronic Thesis or Dissertation, 2014 Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted. Boston College The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Department of English THE FORMATION OF MUSICAL COMMUNITIES IN TWENTIETH CENTURY IRISH LITERATURE A Dissertation by REBECCA TROEGER submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2014 © copyright by REBECCA TROEGER 2014 The Formation Of Musical Communities In Twentieth Century Irish Literature Rebecca Troeger Chair: Marjorie Howes ABSTRACT This dissertation is situated within the opening field of Irish literary and musical interdisciplinary studies and argues that a scholarly focus on the presence of music within Irish literature and culture opens new readings and perspectives. Drawing on cultural studies and musicology, I focus on the musical moment as a limited space during which identities and relationships are dynamically refigured. Through this approach, I look at the formations of communal and individual identities in and through musical performances, the production of gendered identities through music, and musical constructions of memory and the past. The first two chapters of my study deal specifically with the development of gendered identities through musical performance. Chapter 1 focuses on William Butler Yeats’ and Augusta Gregory’s variations on the trope of the male wandering musician as reflected in their writings on the Galway singer and poet Anthony Raftery, and the effects of Yeats’ interest in Raftery on the evolution of his poetic persona, Red Hanrahan. I argue that Raftery, as introduced to Yeats by Lady Gregory, was pivotal to the evolution of Yeats’ self-image as a national poet and helped to define his thoughts on poetry as a performed and musical art. Chapter 2 focuses on opera as a venue for an increased range of personal expression for female characters in Joyce. In it, I argue that the strictly disciplined nature of operatic roles allow Julia Morkan of “The Dead” and Molly Bloom of Ulysses a level of agility with gender identity otherwise unavailable to them. Chapter 2 3 moves from the gendered individual to communal and national identity as reflected in the musical events at the 1932 Eucharistic Congress in Dublin. In it, I argue that the musical performances throughout this event briefly opened a unique social space in which contradictory versions of Irish identity could coexist. Finally, Chapter 4 moves ahead to the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, focusing on Roddy Doyle’s approaches to communal musical experience, the negotiations of identities through music, and constructions of memory through music in The Commitments and The Guts. Here, I consider the issues of cultural connections and appropriations examined by critics of The Commitments and extend these questions to a reading of The Guts. Drawing on Arjun Appadurai’s work on the mobility of cultures and the availability of the past as “raw material” for the present, I argue that The Guts shows how a fraudulent “found” recording of a fictional singer can provide a needed ancestor who articulates a needed narrative of defiance and survival for a 2012 audience. The Formation of Musical Communities in Twentieth Century Irish Literature Rebecca Troeger TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: Finding Community In and Through Musical Performance 1 • Music, Literature, and Ireland 1 • Musical Community in Irish History and Literature 5 Chapter 1: Writing “The World That Sang and Listened”: Yeats, Gregory, and 15 Raftery • Music and Nationalism in Nineteenth Century Ireland: Yeats’ and 19 Gregory’s Precursors • Bardic Ireland: Hanrahan’s Origins 27 • A New Type of Poet: The Early Hanrahan 34 • Coole Park, 1899 and 1900: Lady Gregory’s “Raftery” 37 • “The Twisting Of The Rope” and “The Wedding”: Raftery and Hanrahan 44 On The Stage • Yeats’ Raftery 54 • “Closer To The Life Of The People”: Stories of Red Hanrahan (1905) 59 • Conclusion: Finding the Poet’s Voice 62 Chapter 2: “…till she began to lilt”: The Female Voice in Performance in 66 Dubliners and Ulysses • Women, Opera, and Artistic Agency 69 • “The Disappearing Self”: Feminist Musicology 71 • The Writer As Opera Buff: Joyce’s Musical Career 76 • “Swift and Secure Flight”: Julia/Elvira 83 • The Diva Role in Ulysses 92 Chapter 3: “Voices of the World”: National Identity and Musical Space at the 110 1932 Eucharistic Congress • The Eucharistic Congress as “Audiotopia”: Nationalism and Music 116 • The Eucharistic Congress as a Political Event: Irish Church and State in 122 the 1920s • Re-United For The Eucharist: The Congress as International Event 130 • The Mass at Phoenix Park: “Voices of the world among them, and all our 137 own inflection” • The Music of the Eucharistic Congress 139 • John McCormack and Franck’s “Panis Angelicus” 144 • The Procession: “No Mere Onlookers” 151 • Music, Nationalism, and the Eucharistic Congress 154 ii Chapter 4: Music and Memory in Roddy Doyle’s The Commitments and The 157 Guts • The Commitments: Dublin Soul 159 • The Deterritorialization of Cultures: Appadurai and Doyle 166 • “Our own blues”: The Guts 168 • “We’ll decide what sort of music there was in 1932”: The Revival of 176 Kevin Tankard • “Something From the Past Tense”: The Guts and Memory 179 Conclusion: Found Connections and Further Study 182 Bibliography 188 Acknowledgments No dissertation is written alone, and this work is no exception. I take pleasure in acknowledging the work and generosity of my teachers, mentors, colleagues, friends, family, and students here. First, I have been lucky to have an outstanding dissertation committee. Marjorie Howes, my advisor and chair of this dissertation, has worked with me patiently and generously throughout my MA project, coursework, and dissertation research. She has been a role model and a much-needed source of support. Jim Smith has also been with me from the very beginning, and his tireless attention to my work has consistently challenged me to find new and expanding horizons. Ann Spinney has been a joy to work with, and she brought an important musical perspective to my research. None of this work could have been done without direction and inspiration from all three. I have been very fortunate to receive doctoral and dissertation fellowships from Boston College as well as the Adele Dalsimer dissertation fellowship from the Boston College Irish Studies program. I have also benefitted enormously from discussions and work with the English and Irish studies faculty, especially Philip O’Leary, Joe Nugent, Rob Savage, Chris Wilson, James Najarian, Min Song, Amy Boesky, Lad Tobin, Mary Crane, and Alan Richardson. I am also grateful to my mentors and colleagues at the University of Connecticut and the US Coast Guard Academy, who have challenged me as a teacher and a writer. Susan Lyons and Pamela Bedore at UConn-Avery Point provided a welcoming and stimulating professional environment and supported me as colleagues and friends. At the Coast Guard Academy, I have been lucky to have the support and guidance of Faye Ringel, Karen Wink, José Gonzalez, Brian Krautler, Mariette Ogg, Alex Waid, and Elizabeth Rivero in the Humanities Department, and I am indebted to ii Kathleen Jernquist, Linda Burrows, and Rosalie Maxham at the Hewitt Reading and Writing Center as they have supported me through the final stages of my writing. I am also hugely grateful for the support of the Ph.D. students in the Boston College English department. Amy Witherbee, Katherine Kellett, Catherine Michna, Patrick Moran, Alison Van Vort, Alex Puente, Matthew Heitzmann, Nikhil Gupta, Emma Atwood, Mimi Cowan, and so many others have provided a wonderfully supportive community and sounding board for my ideas. The members of the Finnegans Wake reading group at Boston College, under the able leadership of Joe Nugent, inspired my enthusiasm and curiosity about Joyce’s work. I have also been lucky to teach so many energetic and motivated students at Boston College, UConn, and the Coast Guard Academy while working on my dissertation. At Boston College, the experience of translating my ideas from my writing to the classroom helped me to see The Commitments, Ulysses, and Lady Gregory’s and Yeats’ writing, among many other texts, in an entirely new light. Teaching American literature at UConn while writing Chapter 1 allowed me to see new transatlantic connections, and my students’ input made me excited for further work in American studies. At the Coast Guard Academy, the cadets’ deep commitment and enthusiasm gave me the motivation and discipline I needed to keep my work moving forward. I was first inspired to study Irish literature alongside music through my interest in Irish traditional music, and for that I acknowledge the teaching and encouragement of the late Tony Cuffe, whose class at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education introduced me to the richness and diversity of Irish and Scottish traditional music and reacquainted me iii with my fiddle, as well as the teaching of Seamus Connolly at Boston College and the regular Monday night seisún attendees at the Green Briar pub in Brighton. Finally, and very importantly, I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to my family. My parents, Jim and Beth Troeger, and my sister, Laura Troeger, have shown patience and generosity through the ups and downs of my writing process. I am fortunate to have a large and loving extended family and it has meant so much to have Armens, Grillos, Duhaimes, and Troegers in my corner. My in-laws, Robert and Maureen Ostrowski, have welcomed me into their family and provided much love and support. Most of all, my husband, Mike Ostrowski, has earned this degree at least as much as I have, and is impossible to list all the ways he has made this dissertation possible through his support and his musical knowledge and talent.
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