Mother’s Bag of Tricks: Irish Folklore, Tradition and Identity in John McGahern’s Fiction

Alienation makes the heroes in John McGahern’s stories behave or appear likeuncontrolled, wild and fearful creatures, anticipating a peril but unable to detect a precise dangerand the way to counteract its impact. The demarcation between the safe and unsafe territory is evenmore difficult in circumstances related to death and funerals, as characters are transposed intoa symbolically-built space where images, sounds, colours, and domestic totems help or restrainthem, linking the visible to the subconscious. Diverse motifs from the animal, vegetal or humanrealms, are accompanied by a panoply of stylistic means employed to take the readership into agenuine Irish setting in which animal representations often mirror feelings of numerous humans,from hope to despair, or frailty to rigidity. This paper aims to explore the way in which folkloreextractedelements shape Irish identity and recurrently emerge in McGahern’s literary works, theresult being a unique mixture of imagery and personal memories implanted in both content andnarrative.

Anahtar Kelimeler:

John McGahern, Irish tale, alienation, nature

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