Mother’s Bag of Tricks: Irish Folklore, Tradition and Identity in John McGahern’s Fiction / Anne’in Hileli Oyun Torbası: John McGahern Edebiyatında İrlanda Folkloru, Gelenek ve Kimlik
Alienation makes the heroes in John McGahern’s stories behave or appear like uncontrolled, wild and fearful creatures, anticipating a peril but unable to detect a precise danger and the way to counteract its impact. The demarcation between the safe and unsafe territory is even more difficult in c...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Cyprus International University
2018-05-01
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| Series: | Folklor/Edebiyat |
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| Online Access: | http://www.folkloredebiyat.org/Makaleler/1259369389_DANA%20RADLER%208%20HAz.pdf |
| Summary: | Alienation makes the heroes in John McGahern’s stories behave or appear like
uncontrolled, wild and fearful creatures, anticipating a peril but unable to detect a precise danger
and the way to counteract its impact. The demarcation between the safe and unsafe territory is
even more difficult in circumstances related to death and funerals, as characters are transposed
into a symbolically-built space where images, sounds, colours, and domestic totems help or
restrain them, linking the visible to the subconscious. Diverse motifs from the animal, vegetal or
human realms, are accompanied by a panoply of stylistic means employed to take the readership
into a genuine Irish setting in which animal representations often mirror feelings of numerous
humans, from hope to despair, or frailty to rigidity. This paper aims to explore the way in which
folklore-extracted elements shape Irish identity and recurrently emerge in McGahern’s literary
works, the result being a unique mixture of imagery and personal memories implanted in both
content and narrative. |
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| ISSN: | 1300-7491 1300-7491 |