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- Title
"I wanted them not to be lost": Immigration and Irish Short Fiction.
- Authors
Delaney, Paul
- Abstract
This essay explores representations of immigration in Irish short fiction. It begins with an extended discussion of brian Friel's "Mr. Sing My Heart's delight" (1962), and examines this story's engagement with the complexities of intercultural exchange and preconceptions of difference in mid-twentieth-century rural Ireland. the subtlety of Friel's dramatization of these issues is one of several reasons why this often-overlooked work retains contemporary resonance; the story is additionally important insofar as it belies the assumption that it is only contemporary writers who have discussed these questions in Irish literature. using "Mr. Sing My Heart's delight" as a base, the essay considers the ways in which these and related issues have been imagined by recent writers, including Colum McCann, Roddy doyle, Éilís ní dhuibhne, William trevor, Gerard donovan, Mary o'donnell, donal Ryan, and Melatu uche okorie. the essay draws on genre criticism and on Subaltern Studies theory in its analysis of these writers' works, and it looks at the ways a diverse body of short fiction engages with questions of migration, syncreticism, bigotry, and prejudice in rural, urban, and suburban settings. Collectively, it suggests that these stories challenge normative definitions of identity, encouraging readers to rethink what it means to identify as Irish, to talk about "Irishness," or to live in twenty-first-century Ireland. It also argues for the significance of form--and for the formal constraints of the short story--in the representation of these issues.
- Subjects
EMIGRATION &; immigration in literature; IRISH short stories; IRISH fiction; IRISH literature; MR. Sing My Heart's Delight (Short story); FRIEL, Brian, 1929-2015; IRISH novelists
- Publication
Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, 2019, Vol 42, p74
- ISSN
0703-1459
- Publication type
Article