Mother’s Bag of Tricks: Irish Folklore, Tradition and Identity in John McGahern’s Fiction

Yıl 2018, Cilt: 24 Sayı: 94, 197 - 216, 01.05.2018

Dana Radler

https://doi.org/10.22559/folklor.250

Öz

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 folkloreextracted

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.

Anahtar Kelimeler

John McGahern, Irish tale, alienation, nature

Kaynakça

• Bergen, F. (1895) Burial and holiday customsand beliefs of the Irish peasantry. The Journal of American Folklore, 19-25.
• Carassi, V. (2012) The Irish fairy tale: A narrative tradition from the middle ages to Yates and Stephens. (K. Wren, Trans.) Lanham, Maryland: John Cabot University Press.
• Cardin, B. (2009) Absence does not cast a shadow: Yeats’s Shadowy presence in McGahern’s „The wine breadth. Journal of the Short Story in English, 2-11.
• Collinge, L. & Vernadakis, E. (2003) John McGahern - b. 1934. Journal of the short story in English(41). Retrieved May 15, 2013
• Evans, E. E. (2000) Irish folk ways. Mineola, New York: Dover.
• Farquharson, D. (2009) Violence and ontological doubt in “The Stoat”. Journal of the Short Story in English(53) Retrieved from http://jsse.revues.org/1009.
• Harris, J. (2008) Folklore and the fantastic in nineteenth-century British fiction. Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate.
• Lee, H. (2004, April 7) Readings and conversations: John McGahern. Retrieved May 10, 2013, from www.lannan.org: http://www.lannan.org/images/lit/john-mcgahern-040407- trans-conv.pdf
• Louvel, L. (2009) Reading John McGahern’s “Love of the world” a Fistful of images. Journal of the Short Story in English(53). Retrieved October 10, 2013, from http://jsse.revues. org/997.
• McGahern, J. (1985) High ground and other stories. London: Faber and Faber.
• McGahern, J. (1992) The collected stories. London: Faber and Faber.
• McGahern, J. (2002) That they may face the rising sun. London: Faber and Faber.
• McGahern, J. (2005) Memoir. London: Faber and Faber.
• McGahern, J. (2008a (1991)) Amongst women. London: Faber and Faber.
• McGahern, J. (2008b) The Dark. London: Faber and Faber.
• McGahern, J. (2009a) Creatures of the earth. (ebook). London: Faber and faber. Retrieved April 10, 2013, from iTunes
• McGahern, J. (2009a) Preface. In creatures of the earth: New and Selected Stories. London: Faber and Faber.
• McGahern, J. (2009b) Love of the world: Essays. London: Faber and Faber Ltd.
• McGahern, J. (2009c) The Barracks. London: Faber and Faber.
• McGahern, J. (2009d) The Leavetaking. London: Faber and Faber.
• McGahern, J. (2009e) The Pornographer. London: Faber and Faber.
• Minto, S. (2013) Leitrim folk tales. Dublin: The History Press Ireland.
• O Giollain, D. (2000) Locating Irish folklore. University College Cork: Cork University. Quintelli-Neary, M. (1997) Folklore and the Fantastic in Twelve Modern Irish Novels. Westport, Conneticut and London: Greenwood.
• Sharpe Freeman, E. (1988) Dream Analysis. London: Karnac.
• Taylor, L. J. (1989) Bas In Eirinn: Cultural constructions of death in Ireland. Anthropology Quarterly, 4(62), 175-187.
• Tsukamoto, K., & Kuroki, M. (2014) Eels and Humans. (K. Tsukamoto, & M. Kuroki, Eds.) Tokyo, Heidelberg: Springer.
• Tymoczko, M., & Ireland, C. (Eds.). (2003) Language and tradition in Ireland: Continuities and displacements. Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts.
• Witoszek, N., & Sheeran, P. (1998) Talking to the dead: A Study of Irishfunerary traditions. Amsterdam-Atlanta, GA: Rodopi.