The One, The Only, The….Literature Review

Here it is! The ~Literature Review~

Hello all! In this post I'll discuss and breakdown the various texts I plan to use to ground my thesis. I'm aware that they are subject to change, but I'll be sharing what I've been working with so far. My dissertation will explore the performance of identity in Irish literature, specifically examining the performance of identity in texts published during the Celtic Tiger years along works published after the Celtic Tiger years with a focus on women writers. I am considering using three to four novels in my thesis, which include Anne Enright’s The Forgotten Waltz (2011), Niamh Campbell’s We Were Young (2022), Sally Rooney’s Normal People (2018) OR Beautiful World Where are You (2021), and Noise Dolan’s Exciting Times (2020). My aim will be to explore the concept of performing identity, specifically within relationships, attempting to examine how such a large social and economic paradigm shift may have affected said “performances”. There are a few questions I’d like to explore related to the Celtic Tiger’s effect on fiction, and ultimately, the performance of identity within these texts: How do elements of a pre-boom Ireland appear in contemporary texts? Did Ireland’s newly acquired wealth strip power away from things such as oppressive and outdated gender roles or does it act as a mask, allowing these elements to exist in a different form? What happens when we conflate modernity and social progress?

Now to break down a few a texts I'll be using to ground my argument. Though it primarily surrounds pop-culture and the Americanization of Irish culture, Diane Negra’s essay anthology “The Irish in Us” contains a few essays that I’ve found quite helpful during my preliminary research. Namely, the text’s opening essay “The Irish in Us: Irishness, Performativity, and Popular Culture”. Though my paper would surround performativity within relationships in a twenty-first century Ireland, Negra’s text chiefly asks questions that surround performing “Irishness”. Examining what it means to perform “Irishness”, especially within a more recent time frame, may be a crucial element to analyze in order to do my particular argument justice. Negra states: “Over the last ten years, a particular set of cultural and economic pressures has rapidly transitioned Irishness. Recruited for global capitalism, Irishness has become a form of discursive currency, motivating and authenticating a variety of heritage narratives and commercial transactions” (1). Luz Mar Gonzalez Arias’s “National Identities and Imperfections in Contemporary Irish Literature: Unbecoming Irishness” attempts to understand “what actually qualifies as the past” and notes the relevancy of questioning “the shadowy side of the Tiger” in a twenty-first century Ireland (4). Gonzalez Arias’s focus on the past's effect on the present will help ground my argument, particularly when analyzing The Forgotten Waltz.

Criticism on The Forgotten Waltz, and Enright’s work in general, has proven to be quite plentiful, specifically the anthology of essays on Enright edited by Claire Bracken and Susan Cahill. An essay entitled “Relationships with ‘the Real’ in the work of Anne Enright” by Hedwig Schwall provides insight into the ways that Enright’s work deviates from and critiques the many elements that made Ireland traditionally more conservative pre-boom. I will take these critiques of a pre-boom Ireland and analyze them alongside The Forgotten Waltz, attempting to uncover the ways the past may have manifested itself into how the novel's main character, Gina, performs identity and feels obligated to take on certain roles in both her romantic relationships and her familial relationships.

Along with Cahill’s co-edited collection, she has quite an array of criticism dedicated to literature that was written throughout the Celtic Tiger years. I will use a few essays from Cahill’s anthology entitled, “Irish Literature in the Celtic Tiger Years 1990-2008” to strengthen my argument, particularly regarding how the Celtic Tiger years and literature intersect. Specifically from this book, I’ve found “Irish Literature in the Celtic Tiger Years: Gender, Bodies, Memory” and “Celtic Tiger Bodies” to be essays that would help ground both the historical context of my paper as well as my argument pertaining to the performance of identity. Cahill states that her book “intersects with feminist interrogations of past-present relations and constructions of particular histories to ask how conceptions of the body contribute to and are intertwined with such discourses” (21). I will use Cahill’s argument to help further structure my own argument about the intersection of past and present in The Forgotten Waltz. I will also apply it to the other novels I intend to use..

Though there is not as much criticism written on the other texts I plan to use because they are fairly new, I did find a few essays that pertain to the novels and plan to engage with a few articles about the texts as well as interviews with each of the authors. Sean O’Neill’s “Sally Rooney is Irish” and Anne Enright’s “Beautiful World Where are You — The Problem with Success” are two articles that I am considering referring to. Though they fall within the realm of opinion pieces, they bring up perceptive responses to both the way that Rooney portrays "Irishness" as well as the way she constructs relationships within her work. Regarding criticism on Exciting Times and We Were Young, I still have to do a bit more digging to find essays or reliable articles that prove to be helpful sources. However, I may touch on aspects presented in Alexandra Franchino’s essay “No Authority: Anne Enright’s Exhumation of the Irish Woman Writer”. Though much of it focuses on Enright’s work, the final chapter examines a “new wave” of Irish women writers including Naoise Dolan.

Aside from the many books and essay anthologies I’ve checked out of the library, I also plan to utilize the Boole Library Website and the various databases it allows us to access. I always find JSTOR to be a helpful source, so I will most definitely search for articles through that database. Though I have a fairly useful set of texts as of now, I’m aware that once I begin writing these may change — some new texts may prove helpful and others that I had originally picked may not provide the foundation I’d hoped for.

Works Cited:

Bracken, Claire, and Susan Cahill, editors. Anne Enright. Irish Academic Press, 2011.

Cahill, Susan. Irish Literature in the Celtic Tiger Years 1990 to 2008: Gender, Bodies, Memory. Continuum International Publishing Group, 2011.

Enright, Anne. “Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney Review – the Problem of Success.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 2 Sept. 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/sep/02/beautiful-world-where-are-you-by-sally-rooney-the.

Franchino, Alexandra. No Authority: Anne Enright’s Exhumation of the Irish Woman Writer. Muhlenberg College. JSTOR, https://jstor.org/stable/community.30528850.

Gonzalez-Arias, Luz Mar. National Identities and Imperfections in Contemporary Irish Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

Negra, Diane. The Irish in US: Irishness, Performativity, and Popular Culture. Duke University Press, 2006.

O'Neill, Sean. “Sally Rooney Is Irish.” Gawker, Gawker, 7 Sept. 2021, https://www.gawker.com/culture/sally-rooney-is-irish.