Irish fiction

One of the critics who discuss Johnston’s work is Laila Khan. In her essay, “Domestic Unrest and Jennifer Johnston’s Fiction of the Irish Trouble,” Khan focuses on how Johnston’s novels do not concentrate on the violence happening in the nation, but instead how she “uses Irish domestic fictions to explored alternative approaches to friendships and family bonds that could exist when women reject nationalist narratives” (2). Khan’s essay analyzes these trends in relationship to the mothers in Johnston’s

Furthering the impression of Gypsy’s liminality is the sense that her identity is withheld. Her clothes are another indicator of how her identity has been stripped in the same way her clothes are removed, “Holding her clothes about her body she stepped to the corner of the lodge and looked across at the blazing house” (32). Clothes are an indicator of class, personality and therefore identity. By merely holding them “about her body” she bears no identity. Later in the text, she is stripped of a voice

J. M. Synge is one of the most prominent Irish writers of the twentieth century; his writing characterizes a broad, multifaceted range of political, social and religious anxieties shaping Ireland for the duration of its most remarkable period of change, which transformed the place from a relatively peaceful country to a more political and aggressive location. The picture Synge creates shows us that the question of identity relating to Ireland is problematic; however it has produced and provoked

invasion and colonization, the Irish endured decades of violence and oppression. During this time, the Irish were stereotyped and made out to be inferior to their British counterparts in an attempt to justify their right to rule. The Irish people were depicted as violent drunks who were more animal than human. They were often likened to pigs, portrayed as poor, dirty, and stupid. Obviously, this contributed to the animosity between the native Irish and their Anglo-Irish neighbors. The country lacked

Irish novelist and non-fiction writer Joseph O’Neill once said, “One of the great pluses of being an immigrant is you get to start again in terms of your identity. You get to shed the narratives which cling to you.” If I would have heard this quote in high school, or even two and half years ago when I was starting my freshman year of college, I would definitely not agree. I would have told you that I was American and that there was no way I would identify as being an immigrant. Now, here I am three

Near the turn of the twentieth century, Ireland had a crisis of identity. In 1890, the most influential Irish Nationalist politician and champion of home rule, Charles Stewart Parnell, was denounced by the Catholic Church of Ireland over the Divorce Crisis, something the church saw as an immoral affair. The issue of Parnell’s morality split the Irish public’s opinion on what was fundamentally most important: Religion or State Freedom. The political progress that was made towards a freer Ireland came

Struggles of Finding an Identity Still, after the official Irish Independence in 1922, the Irish people needed to find an identity free of the English influence, but also of the Catholic morality and the values celebrated by the Revival. They had to define an identity which could be in step with the times and truly represent them. It was a particularly difficult task for intellectuals and writers. They found themselves almost shut up by Irish censorship and rejected by the bigotry that mostly characterized

Still after the official Irish Independence in 1922, the Irish people needed to find an identity free of the English influence but also of the Catholic morality and the values celebrated by the Revival, an identity which could be in step with the times and truly represent them. It was a particularly difficult task for intellectuals and writers. They found themselves almost shut up by Irish censorship and rejected by the bigotry that mostly characterized the middle-class society for decades after

its relation to certain English novelistic traditions and also the broader Irish literary tradition in which it belongs. Seamus Deane refers to Ireland as a "Strange Country" and indeed O'Brien's own narrator recalls the words of his father: " . . . he would mention Parnell with the customers and say that Ireland was a queer country." (7) Such a concurrence indicates to a degree the peculiar nature of the Irish situation with regard to

facing the dichotomies of Irish culture. At Swim is at its most understated, a text of parodies. O'Brien expertly strings together the many layers of his novel's world to express a slew of critical observations about modernist ideology and realism, as well as exposing a necessary dialogue on the formation and perception of Irish culture. A third major aspect of At Swim-Two-Birds lies closer to O'Brien's own life experience: this is a novel of Irish identity. The Irish identity that O'Brien