Chapter One will outline the way I will be using the constructs of "national" and "personal"
identity, and will then move on to provide a brief contextual setting for the creation and
importance of certain literary conventions of Irish topography and character, in particular by
examining the cultural nationalism in Yeats's poems. In doing so, I will outline the metaphor
of evolution which is crucial in this dissertation, and will examine some of the ethical
implications of employing this metaphor. Chapter Two will examine the 1996 memoir
Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt, outline McCourt's employment of various stock Irish
tropes, and show how this leads to a conflation of "personal" and "national" identity, to the
detriment of the memoir. Chapter Three will turn to critique Are You Somebody?, the
memoir by Nuala O'Faolain which was also published in 1996. I will argue that, in contrast
to Angela 's Ashes, Are You Somebody? offers a constructive fusion of both kinds of identity national
and personal. In Chapter Four, I will compare and contrast key issues in the texts, in
relation to their both being memoirs of (Irish) national significance, published at the same
time in a changing Ireland, and I will conclude by arguing that the process of invention which
is necessary for the writing of a memoir is equally necessary for the creation of a national
identity. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2001.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ukzn/oai:http://researchspace.ukzn.ac.za:10413/3252 |
| Date | January 2001 |
| Creators | Stobie, Melissa Lauren. |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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