‘Many and terrible are the roads to home’: representations of the immigrant in the contemporary Irish short story
‘Many and terrible are the roads to home’: representations of the immigrant in the contemporary Irish short story
This chapter explores reconfigurations of traditional national identities in the short fiction of Edna O’ Brien, Colm Tóibín, Anne Enright, Colum McCann, Mary O'Donnell, and Éilís Ní Dhuibhne. Drawing on Paul Ricoeur's observations about selfhood and Otherness, the author demonstrates that these writers frequently use the figure of the immigrant in order to scrutinise, in the postnational context of Ireland, the shattering of conventional notions about self, family, and community. As the author shows, the immigrant never appears as an isolated motif in fictional portrayals of contemporary Ireland. Rather, the description of such a character tends to be linked with incisive explorations of contemporary Irishness.
Keywords: Edna O’ Brien, Colm Tóibín, Anne Enright, Colum McCann Mary O'Donnell, Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, Paul Ricoeur, Immigration
Manchester Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
