• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.60 no.2
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• pp.315-338
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• 2014

In The Great Hunger (1942) Patrick Kavanagh opens an Irish postnationalist discourse. Taking advantage of historical revisionism and postcolonialism, he not only demystifies a romantic nationalist ideology rooted in rural Ireland but also searches for an autonomous literary tradition free of the Irish Literary Revival, supposedly an outcome of a colonial influence. As a farmer-poet, Kavanagh deconstructs in two ways myths of rural areas, to which the Revivalists aspire. Contrary to Revivalism, he reveals that rural Ireland is not an idealized place where national identity arises and individual spirits are restored. It is instead a cruel place where farmer Maguire, deprived of health, wealth, and love, is tortured by hard labor in the field, moral regulations imposed by the Church, and his mother's domestic authority, all of which leave him unmarried until age sixty-five. Kavanagh also challenges the Revivalist tradition, led by W. B. Yeats commonly referred to as the poet of the nation, by indicting its reliance on former colonial authority and its lack of a sense of communal autonomy, both of which are diagnosed as "provincialism" by Kavanagh. Given that modern Irish literature has been strongly colored as nationalistic during the course of anticolonial resistance, Kavanagh's critique of the Revival in The Great Hunger, whose proponents blindly beautify the lives of farmers, runs directly against the grain of the founding ideology of the Irish nation-state. His voice, like that of a whistle-blower, disclosing the harsh realities of rural Ireland, ushers in a "post"-nationalist perspective on nation and national myths in Irish poetics.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.55 no.2
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• pp.337-357
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• 2009

Ned Kelly, the bushranger, is a legendary figure of special significance to the Australians of today. The Aussies' affection for this "horse thief" derives from the fact that the latter has become a national ideal of the "battler" who does not give up in the face of hardships. Peter Carey's is considered to be one of the "national narratives" that not only heroize but also give voice to the Irish rebels who fought for "fair go" in the colonial Australia. However, this paper asserts that there are more to the novel than merely paying a tribute to the national icon, especially when the novel is examined in the context of the "republic controversy." In 1999, the preceding year of the novel's publication, Australia had a national referendum on the issue of whether or not to secede from the Commonwealth. Due to the procedural manipulation of the royalist ruling party, republicanism was voted down. At the time when the majority of Australians were irate with the result of the referendum, Carey's retelling of the supposedly anti-British rebel failed to promote the lost cause. This paper investigates how the narrativization of the legendary figure, whose anti-British and anti-authoritarian attitude can be easily translated into the cause of republicanism, came to appeal to the general reading public. In so doing, this paper compares Carey's novel with the historical Kelly's two epistles: Jerilderie and Cameron Letter. This comparison brings to light what is left out in the process of Carey's narrativization of the rebel's life: the subversive militant voice of an Irish nationalist. The conclusion of this paper is that the possibility for Kelly's life to surface again in the 21st century as a sort of counter-memory is contained by Carey through its inclusion in a highly personalized domestic narrative.