OWAD 3 OWAD utstanding issertations 3 JOANNA JARZĄB JOANNA Houses, towns, cities towns, Houses, JOANNA JARZĄB Wydział Anglistyki Houses, towns, cities – the changing perception ISBN 978-83-232-2984-1 of space and place in contemporary Irish novels WYDAWNICTWO NAUKOWE UAM Houses, towns, cities – the changing perception of space and place in contemporary Irish novels FACULTY OF ENGLISH ADAM MICKIEWICZ UNIVERSITY IN POZNAŃ Outstanding WA Dissertations OWAD 3 Joanna Jarząb Houses, towns, cities – the changing perception of space and place in contemporary Irish novels Poznań 2016 ABSTRACT. Jarząb Joanna. Houses, towns, cities – the changing perception of space and place in contemporary Irish novels Adam Mickiewicz University Press. Poznań 2016. Pp. 238. OWAD 3. ISBN978-83-232-2984-1. Text in English with summary in Polish. The book treats on the change in the representation of the concepts of space and place in contemporary Irish novels. The thesis examines the interrelation between place and identity, underlying its prevalence in contemporary Irish culture. Therefore, the analysis of the novels aims to present how the alterations in the perception of given places influ- ence the development of personal and collective consciousness in contemporary Repub- lic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The work argues for the simultaneity of these two processes, allowing for the treatment of place as a mirror for social changes observable in Ireland. KEY WORDS: place, home, countryside, city, Irish contemporary novel, Ireland Joanna Jarząb, Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University, al. Niepodległości 4, 61-678 Poznań, Poland; email: [email protected] Publikacja finansowana ze środków Wydziału Anglistyki UAM Reviewer/Recenzent Prof. Jerzy Jarniewicz © Joanna Jarząb 2016 This edition © Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, Poznań 2016 Cover design/Projekt okładki: Agnieszka Frydrychewicz Typesetting and formatting/Skład i formatowanie: Pracownia Wydawnicza WA UAM ISBN 978-83-232-2984-1 WYDAWNICTWO NAUKOWE UNIWERSYTETU IM. ADAMA MICKIEWICZA 61-701 POZNAŃ, UL. FREDRY 10 www.press.amu.edu.pl Sekretariat: tel. 61 829 46 46, fax 61 829 46 47, e-mail: [email protected] Dział sprzedaży: tel. 61 829 46 40, e-mail: [email protected] Wydanie I. Ark. wyd. 16,00. Ark. druk. 14,875. DRUK I OPRAWA: EXPOL, WŁOCŁAWEK, UL. BRZESKA 4 Contents Introduction .................................................................................................... 7 Chapter One The meaning of one’s own place: Some conceptual remarks on space and nationalism .............................................................................. 25 1.1. Representations of space in twentieth-century theories .................. 28 1.2. From a political ideology to a cultural self-awareness – the changing approach towards the concept of nationalism in the twentieth century and beyond .......................................................... 45 1.3. Ethnic vs. civic nationalism – the Irish context ................................ 53 Chapter Two National and individual identity within the domestic space on the example of William Trevor’s and Jennifer Johnston’s novels ........................ 71 2.1. The big house as the last epitome of Protestants’ Irishness in William Trevor’s The silence in the garden .................................. 76 2.2. The end of the Big House ethos in William Trevor’s Love and summer ............................................................................. 88 2.3. The question of a heterogeneous identity in Jennifer Johnston’s Fool’s sanctuary ............................................................................... 96 2.4. Individual identity with(out) memory – Foolish mortals by Jennifer Johnston ...................................................................... 107 Chapter Three The local sense of place – the past vs. the present of the Irish countryside in the works of John McGahern and Deirdre Madden ............. 119 3.1. The local as the universal – two sides of John McGahern’s countryside in Amongst women ...................................................... 125 3.2. John McGahern’s That they may face the rising sun as the writer’s reconciliation with the countryside .......................... 135 3.3. A desolate province or a rural paradise? Deirdre Madden’s Nothing is black .............................................................................. 142 3.4. Ireland as a province in Deirdre Madden’s Molly Fox’s birthday ........................................................................................... 152 6 Contents Chapter Four Glenn Patterson’s Belfast vs. Anne Enright’s Dublin – Ireland from two perspectives .................................................................................. 163 4.1. Belfast as a synecdoche for Northern Ireland in Glenn Patterson’s Fat lad .............................................................................................. 167 4.2. Belfast vs. Hiroshima – Glenn Patterson’s The third party ........... 180 4.3. Memories de/encoded within the space of the city – Dublin in Anne Enright’s The gathering .................................................... 189 4.4. Between boosting and flagging economy – contemporary Dublin in Anne Enright’s The forgotten waltz ............................... 200 Conclusion .................................................................................................... 211 Domy, miasteczka, miasta – zmiana w postrzeganiu przestrzeni i miejsca we współczesnych powieściach irlandzkich (Streszczenie) ........... 217 References ................................................................................................... 225 Introduction When mentioning Ireland it seems impossible to escape the impression that despite the increasing internationalization of the two states that form the island together with a number of differences between them, still both nations remain heavily dependent on the same attachment to place as the most im- portant indicator of their individual and communal identity. Irish people, due to the geographical location of their homeland on the island, have always ap- proached Ireland as naturally isolated from other countries, taking its sover- eignty for granted. It was much easier for them to justify their separateness from Britain than for Wales and Scotland, which had to share the island with the English kingdom. Therefore, Ireland has never accepted British domina- tion. Since the first invasion in 1169 till 1922 the Irish did what they could to sustain the autonomy of their kingdom and after the Union in 1800 found no other option but to fight for independence. Being totally convinced about the rightness of their cause, the Irish nationalists glorified the idea of Ireland as a unified country. Thus, despite the visible regional division of the island trace- able back to the old Irish period when its land was subdivided into several kingdoms, Irish people have for a very long time believed in the homogeneity of Ireland as a country and as a society. Thus, the act of partition in 1922 met with negative responses from nationalistic movements. Almost the whole of the twentieth century was marked by the repercussions of this political deci- sion, with the peace process still not having been brought to a final end. In the case of Ireland, the direct link between space and national identity is easily observable and thus may work as a firm ground for the analysis of the changes which occur in the contemporary Irish society. Their unique attachment to the island as one of the most significant determinants of the Irish identity is clearly visible in literature, especially the novel. This genre, being the last one to emerge, for quite a long time had to “[fight] for its own hegemony” (Bakhtin 1981: 4). Ireland is not the least dif- ferent, since poetry and drama had for a long time played a central role in the country’s cultural consciousness. Although the Irish novel emerged in the nineteenth century, not until the beginning of the twentieth century did it receive much attention in comparison to the dominating influence of poetry and drama. However, this relatively small island has produced an extraordi- nary number of famous prose writers such as George Moore, Elizabeth Bo- 8 Introduction wen, James Joyce, Patrick Kavanagh, Sean O’Faolain, Brendan Behan, Edna O’Brien, Brian Moore or Bernard MacLaverty, just to name a few. The as- tounding number of renowned twentieth-century novelists proves that the Irish novel has gained an important place in literature, not only the national one but also worldwide. Contrary to other genres, the novel appears to be the only one still in the process of constant development, thus “it reflects more deeply, more essentially, more sensitively and rapidly, reality itself in the process of its unfolding” (Bakhtin 1981: 7). The fact that the novel is all the time taking new forms justifies its adaptability to the changes which occur in society. For Brennan, this flexibility is expressed not only in the form of new genres and subgenres created by writers, but also in the form understood as a “a jumble of poetry, drama, newspaper, report, memoir, and speech; a mix- ture of the jargons of race and ethnicity” (1990: 51). By bringing high and low, formal and informal, fact and fiction together, the novel becomes a complex composition, whose heterogeneous framework well reflects the structure of the nation. This adaptability is clearly visible in the case of