Oral Textuality, Gender and the Gothic in Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s A Ghost in the Throat (2020)
In Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s A Ghost in the Throat, the first-person narrator details her scholarly endeavour to translate into English Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire – the Irish-language lament of the eighteenth-century Kerry woman, Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, on the death of her husband, Art Ó Laoghaire. I...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Asociación Española de Estudios Irlandeses
2023-12-01
|
| Series: | Estudios Irlandeses |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://www.estudiosirlandeses.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/3_LAWRENSON_DEFFF.pdf |
| _version_ | 1797384635961835520 |
|---|---|
| author | SONJA LAWRENSON |
| author_facet | SONJA LAWRENSON |
| author_sort | SONJA LAWRENSON |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | In Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s A Ghost in the Throat, the first-person narrator details her scholarly endeavour to translate into English Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire – the Irish-language lament of the eighteenth-century Kerry woman, Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, on the death of her husband, Art Ó Laoghaire. Interwoven with this narrative, is the narrator’s intimate account of her lived personal experience whilst researching and translating this caoineadh. And yet, even as her search for the Caoineadh’s origins grows increasingly fervent, the narrator becomes ever more wary of the viability and implications of such historical retrieval. Caught between a desire to recover Ní Chonaill’s voice and presence and a recognition of the illusory nature of such longings, Ní Ghríofa’s text probes the interstices between the Caoineadh and its myriad iterations in performance, transcription, and translation. In this way, Ní Ghríofa confronts longstanding European anxieties regarding the relationship between writing and orality.
Drawing on Jacques Derrida’s seminal critique of this eighteenth-century crisis of writing, this article commences by revealing the caoineadh as an unacknowledged yet ongoing flashpoint in Enlightenment debates concerning orality and textuality. The article then turns to a discussion of Derrida’s associated reflections on haunting to consider the ways in which Ní Ghríofa responds to the marginalisation and silencing of the matrilineal tradition of keening in which she engages. Departing from Derrida’s genealogy of political inheritance, it argues that Ní Ghríofa’s narrative rehearses an alternative gothic textuality in which the oral and the written are intricately interwoven within Ireland’s past, present, and future. In so doing, it eschews the androcentric, ethnocentric and, as the text’s conclusion lays bare, anthropocentric hierarchies that continue to impinge upon both the Caoineadh’s legacy and the Irish literary canon in the twenty-first century. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-08T21:38:30Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-c42fdc0804c54188aae28cc5fe4b1e37 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1699-311X |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-08T21:38:30Z |
| publishDate | 2023-12-01 |
| publisher | Asociación Española de Estudios Irlandeses |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Estudios Irlandeses |
| spelling | doaj.art-c42fdc0804c54188aae28cc5fe4b1e372023-12-20T16:59:23ZengAsociación Española de Estudios IrlandesesEstudios Irlandeses1699-311X2023-12-0118.218.2284212043Oral Textuality, Gender and the Gothic in Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s A Ghost in the Throat (2020)SONJA LAWRENSON0 Manchester Metropolitan University, UK In Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s A Ghost in the Throat, the first-person narrator details her scholarly endeavour to translate into English Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire – the Irish-language lament of the eighteenth-century Kerry woman, Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, on the death of her husband, Art Ó Laoghaire. Interwoven with this narrative, is the narrator’s intimate account of her lived personal experience whilst researching and translating this caoineadh. And yet, even as her search for the Caoineadh’s origins grows increasingly fervent, the narrator becomes ever more wary of the viability and implications of such historical retrieval. Caught between a desire to recover Ní Chonaill’s voice and presence and a recognition of the illusory nature of such longings, Ní Ghríofa’s text probes the interstices between the Caoineadh and its myriad iterations in performance, transcription, and translation. In this way, Ní Ghríofa confronts longstanding European anxieties regarding the relationship between writing and orality. Drawing on Jacques Derrida’s seminal critique of this eighteenth-century crisis of writing, this article commences by revealing the caoineadh as an unacknowledged yet ongoing flashpoint in Enlightenment debates concerning orality and textuality. The article then turns to a discussion of Derrida’s associated reflections on haunting to consider the ways in which Ní Ghríofa responds to the marginalisation and silencing of the matrilineal tradition of keening in which she engages. Departing from Derrida’s genealogy of political inheritance, it argues that Ní Ghríofa’s narrative rehearses an alternative gothic textuality in which the oral and the written are intricately interwoven within Ireland’s past, present, and future. In so doing, it eschews the androcentric, ethnocentric and, as the text’s conclusion lays bare, anthropocentric hierarchies that continue to impinge upon both the Caoineadh’s legacy and the Irish literary canon in the twenty-first century.https://www.estudiosirlandeses.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/3_LAWRENSON_DEFFF.pdforalityirelandgenderhauntologylamentdoireann ní ghríofa. |
| spellingShingle | SONJA LAWRENSON Oral Textuality, Gender and the Gothic in Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s A Ghost in the Throat (2020) Estudios Irlandeses orality ireland gender hauntology lament doireann ní ghríofa. |
| title | Oral Textuality, Gender and the Gothic in Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s A Ghost in the Throat (2020) |
| title_full | Oral Textuality, Gender and the Gothic in Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s A Ghost in the Throat (2020) |
| title_fullStr | Oral Textuality, Gender and the Gothic in Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s A Ghost in the Throat (2020) |
| title_full_unstemmed | Oral Textuality, Gender and the Gothic in Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s A Ghost in the Throat (2020) |
| title_short | Oral Textuality, Gender and the Gothic in Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s A Ghost in the Throat (2020) |
| title_sort | oral textuality gender and the gothic in doireann ni ghriofa s a ghost in the throat 2020 |
| topic | orality ireland gender hauntology lament doireann ní ghríofa. |
| url | https://www.estudiosirlandeses.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/3_LAWRENSON_DEFFF.pdf |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT sonjalawrenson oraltextualitygenderandthegothicindoireannnighriofasaghostinthethroat2020 |