|
" An duine aonair agus an tsochai i saothar Phadraic Ui Chonaire "
Mac Bhloscaidh , Marcas
| Document Type
|
:
|
Latin Dissertation
|
| Record Number
|
:
|
1100969
|
| Doc. No
|
:
|
TLets669660
|
| Main Entry
|
:
|
Mac Bhloscaidh , Marcas
|
| Title & Author
|
:
|
An duine aonair agus an tsochai i saothar Phadraic Ui Chonaire\ Mac Bhloscaidh , Marcas
|
| College
|
:
|
Ulster University
|
| Date
|
:
|
2013
|
| student score
|
:
|
2013
|
| Degree
|
:
|
Ph.D.
|
| Abstract
|
:
|
This thesis is a postcolonial study of the work of Padraic O Conaire. From the great surge of theCultural Renaissance to the reconsolidating of conservative forces under the Free State, OConaire's career encapsulates the defining period of modern Ireland. As the Introductiondiscusses, this thesis sites his work centrally in that revolutionary era, with O Conaire influencedby the great writers of European Realism who made a profound critique of their own societieswith their central focus on the lived experience of the individual. Instead of the modernalienation of his characters, or the radicalism of the author's own politics, both of whichcomprise the most prominent strands in his critical portrayal to date, O Conaire is seen to makethat necessary synthesis between the psychological and the political aspects as a creative writer.Though rooted in the historical experience of the race, the anti-authoritarian project ofPostcolonialism is defined as an ongoing challenge in an age of global capitalism and theworking through of the psycho-cultural effects of colonization.Noting their emphasis on the biographical element, the Literature Review examines themain contemporary full-length critical studies of 6 Conaire: P6.draic 6 Conaire - Deorai (1994)by Padraigin Riggs which investigates the themes of alienation and exile in the life and the work;Padraic 6 Conaire - Sceal a Bheatha (1995) by Eibhlin Ni Chionnaith which unearths a wealthof biographical information to finally create a portrait of a bohemian Romantic; and ReabhloidPhadraic Ui Chonaire (2007) by Aindrias O Cathasaigh, which directs its attention on OConaire's journalism and his articulation of a revolutionary socialism; and Saoirse Anama UiChonaire (1984) by Tomas O Broin's which is a monograph on O Conaire's one novelDeoraiocht and argues for its socialist expressionism based on the author's lived experience.Three significant short studies out of the wide range of essays on the writer are then reviewed:'Padraic O Conaire' by Seosamh Mac Grianna (1936) which portrays O Conaire as a heroicliterary pioneer for all his faults, 'Padraic 6 Conaire agus Cearta an Duine' by Declan Kiberd(1983) which emphasizes his eccentric individualism and his socialism, and 'An tOrscealReadach III' by Alan Titley (1991) which claims a special kind of literary realism for Deoraiocht.The remaining works of the Literature Review develop and deepen the postcolonial basis of thisthesis, being significant studies in the international and in the Irish context: The Colonizer andthe Colonized by the Tunisian writer AlbeIt Memmi, which is a piercing sociological and psychological exposure of the phenomenon of colonization; Tren bhFearann Breac - anDilaithriu Culruir agus Nualitriocht na Gaeilge Ie Mairin Nic Eoin which applies a wide rangeof postcolonial theorizing to modern Irish language literature; and 'Decolonizing the Mind:Language and Literature in Ireland' by Gearoid Denvir which is a polemical account of thepsycho-cultural aspect of colonization and also treats of the marginalization of modern Irishlanguage and literature. The Review includes a brief examination of the work which inspired thetitle of Denvir's essay, namely Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in AfricanLiterature by Ngugi wa Thiong'o.The first chapter of this thesis discusses Deoraiocht as a powerful anti -colonial novel, amonologue of rebellion located in the heart of empire. The second chapter examines importantstatements from O Conaire's journalistic output concerning the role of the writer in society, andabout Irish society itself in the troubled period from 1917-1921, in a critical context thatcompares the basic radicalism of the modern Russian writer with the Gaelic literary tradition.The third chapter considers O Conaire's five plays, from their original inspiration in DouglasHyde's plays about traditional Gaeltacht society, to their development of the comic hero ofEuropean theatre. The selection of his short stories in the fourth chapter reflects the arc of OConaire's opus, from Paidin Mhaire, the tragic victim of the colonial system, to the subversivecomedy of Fearfeasa Mac Feasa with his challenge to conventional officialdom.The Conclusion looks forward as well as back in that O Conaire as a postcolonial writerstraddled the official British colony founded on political, social and economic repression and theofficial Free State with its emerging conservative, bourgeois and religious ethos. Just like thegreat modernist pioneer in Irish writing in English, James Joyce, who was born in the samemonth as O Conaire, his own work is seen to be intimately bound up with the project ofdecolonization and with the realization of the individual as the embodiment of a changedsociety. Also, like the dispossessed Gaelic poet of the seventeenth century and the modernunderground writer of the Soviet State, O Conaire's work is shown as retaining from beginningto end the integrity of the outsider committed to the truth of individual expression against theideological control of the dominant institutions of pre- and post-imperial Irish society. If weIrish want the genuine freedom that O Conaire advocated, then we can discover the hiddenfoundations of our contemporary society in his work, in which there is a truthful reflection of,and liberating insight into, the period that formed today's Ireland.
|
| Subject
|
:
|
Padraic O Conaire, Irish literature, Celtic literature, Journalism, Socialism
|
| Added Entry
|
:
|
Ulster University
|
| |