My research centres on autobiography and life writing, with a particular interest in Irish life-writing. My primary focus is on the writers of the Blasket Islands. A related interest is in the life-writing of performers including Marta Becket, Jimmy Buffett and Pierce Turner.
\u27 Say your farewell to Ireland\u27, cries one of the rowers, and I turn and bid farewell, not ... more \u27 Say your farewell to Ireland\u27, cries one of the rowers, and I turn and bid farewell, not only to Ireland, but to England and Europe and all the tangled world of today (Flower 6). So wrote Robin Flower of his lifechanging first journey into the Great Blasket Island, off the Kerry coast in the west of Ireland, where he would one day be given the honorary title of which he was most proud: BIGithin. It was a title that signified so much: the Irish word for Flower . It offered a translation of his name, its diminutive form a linguistic sign of the Islanders\u27 deep affection for him. The fact that they gave him a nick-name at all was a clear sign that he had an Island life of his own, a sign that he was regarded with fondness as a member of the Island community. It might also be read as a mark of the translated identity of this Englishman who translated An tOileanach, (0 Criomhthain) the first of the Blasket Island autobiographies into English as The Islandman (O\u27Crohan). His words above express his impression, soon and forever confirmed, that his journey was taking him into an entirely other world
Peig, the autobiography of Peig Sayers of the Great Blasket Island, was first published in 1936 a... more Peig, the autobiography of Peig Sayers of the Great Blasket Island, was first published in 1936 and was followed three years later by a second volume of lifewriting, Machtnamh Seana-Mhna. Both works were later translated into English, An Old Woman’s Reflections reaching the English readership in 1962 and Peig in 1974.
Page 1. Page 2. Page 3. The Islandman Page 4. Reimagining Ireland Volume 3 Edited by Dr Eamon Mah... more Page 1. Page 2. Page 3. The Islandman Page 4. Reimagining Ireland Volume 3 Edited by Dr Eamon Maher Institute of Technology, Tallaght PETER LANG Oxford Bern Berlin Bruxelles Frankfurt am Main New York Wien Page 5. ...
Throughout the centuries, various societies have conjured mythical islands in response to their o... more Throughout the centuries, various societies have conjured mythical islands in response to their own cultural needs. Hy Brasil, for instance, offered European societies a measure of comfort against the vast emptiness of the Atlantic Ocean and the uncertainty of what lay beyond it. For the past fifty years or so, Jimmy Buffett has been writing and singing about islands both real and imaginary. His audience, though boasting a worldwide membership, is mostly American. His island fantasias are easily attained – in the first instance by the yachting classes of East Coast America but also, just as easily, by anyone willing to pull on a grass skirt, order a margarita and get swept up in the music he plays. The paper will examine the features of Buffett’s island construct and consider the cultural work it performs. It will show that the affable Jimmy character which Buffett performs on stage and the autobiographical Jimmy of A Pirate Looks at Fifty, mask the more entrepreneurial aspects of h...
This book concerns Tomás O\u27Crohan of the Blasket Islands and offers a radical reinterpretation... more This book concerns Tomás O\u27Crohan of the Blasket Islands and offers a radical reinterpretation of this iconic Irish figure and his place in Gaelic literature. It examines the politics of Irish culture that turned O\u27Crohan into «The Islandman» and harnessed his texts to the national political project, presenting him as an instinctual, natural hero and a naïve, almost unwilling writer, and his texts as artefacts of unselfconscious, unmediated linguistic and ethnographic authenticity. The author demonstrates that such misleading claims, never properly scrutinised before this study, have been to the detriment of the author\u27s literary reputation and that they have obscured the deeply personal and highly idiosyncratic purpose and nature of his writing. At the core of the book is a recognition that what O\u27Crohan wrote was not primarily a history, nor an ethnography, but an autobiography. The book demonstrates that the conventional reading of the texts, which privileges O\u27Cro...
\u27 Say your farewell to Ireland\u27, cries one of the rowers, and I turn and bid farewell, not ... more \u27 Say your farewell to Ireland\u27, cries one of the rowers, and I turn and bid farewell, not only to Ireland, but to England and Europe and all the tangled world of today (Flower 6). So wrote Robin Flower of his lifechanging first journey into the Great Blasket Island, off the Kerry coast in the west of Ireland, where he would one day be given the honorary title of which he was most proud: BIGithin. It was a title that signified so much: the Irish word for Flower . It offered a translation of his name, its diminutive form a linguistic sign of the Islanders\u27 deep affection for him. The fact that they gave him a nick-name at all was a clear sign that he had an Island life of his own, a sign that he was regarded with fondness as a member of the Island community. It might also be read as a mark of the translated identity of this Englishman who translated An tOileanach, (0 Criomhthain) the first of the Blasket Island autobiographies into English as The Islandman (O\u27Crohan). His words above express his impression, soon and forever confirmed, that his journey was taking him into an entirely other world
Peig, the autobiography of Peig Sayers of the Great Blasket Island, was first published in 1936 a... more Peig, the autobiography of Peig Sayers of the Great Blasket Island, was first published in 1936 and was followed three years later by a second volume of lifewriting, Machtnamh Seana-Mhna. Both works were later translated into English, An Old Woman’s Reflections reaching the English readership in 1962 and Peig in 1974.
Page 1. Page 2. Page 3. The Islandman Page 4. Reimagining Ireland Volume 3 Edited by Dr Eamon Mah... more Page 1. Page 2. Page 3. The Islandman Page 4. Reimagining Ireland Volume 3 Edited by Dr Eamon Maher Institute of Technology, Tallaght PETER LANG Oxford Bern Berlin Bruxelles Frankfurt am Main New York Wien Page 5. ...
Throughout the centuries, various societies have conjured mythical islands in response to their o... more Throughout the centuries, various societies have conjured mythical islands in response to their own cultural needs. Hy Brasil, for instance, offered European societies a measure of comfort against the vast emptiness of the Atlantic Ocean and the uncertainty of what lay beyond it. For the past fifty years or so, Jimmy Buffett has been writing and singing about islands both real and imaginary. His audience, though boasting a worldwide membership, is mostly American. His island fantasias are easily attained – in the first instance by the yachting classes of East Coast America but also, just as easily, by anyone willing to pull on a grass skirt, order a margarita and get swept up in the music he plays. The paper will examine the features of Buffett’s island construct and consider the cultural work it performs. It will show that the affable Jimmy character which Buffett performs on stage and the autobiographical Jimmy of A Pirate Looks at Fifty, mask the more entrepreneurial aspects of h...
This book concerns Tomás O\u27Crohan of the Blasket Islands and offers a radical reinterpretation... more This book concerns Tomás O\u27Crohan of the Blasket Islands and offers a radical reinterpretation of this iconic Irish figure and his place in Gaelic literature. It examines the politics of Irish culture that turned O\u27Crohan into «The Islandman» and harnessed his texts to the national political project, presenting him as an instinctual, natural hero and a naïve, almost unwilling writer, and his texts as artefacts of unselfconscious, unmediated linguistic and ethnographic authenticity. The author demonstrates that such misleading claims, never properly scrutinised before this study, have been to the detriment of the author\u27s literary reputation and that they have obscured the deeply personal and highly idiosyncratic purpose and nature of his writing. At the core of the book is a recognition that what O\u27Crohan wrote was not primarily a history, nor an ethnography, but an autobiography. The book demonstrates that the conventional reading of the texts, which privileges O\u27Cro...
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