02_Defining the Bildungsroman, 01_Introduction, 03_Defining the Irish Bildungsroman, 04_Modernist Ireland I, 05_Modernist Ireland II, 06_Modernist Ireland III, 07_Modernist Ireland IV, 08_Post-War Ireland I, 09_Post-War Ireland II, 10_Post-War Ireland III, 11_Post-War Ireland IV, 12_The Troubles, 13_Contemporary Ireland I, 14_Contemporary Ireland II, 15_Final Exam
++ Please note that this seminar, as it is currently planned, will take place on campus and requires students' physical presence. ++
As the recent international successes of TV series such as ‘Derry Girls’ and films like ‘Sing Street’ or ‘Belfast’ indicate, there can be no doubt about the wide global appeal of Irish coming-of-age narratives. Their popularity is matched by contemporary Irish novels focusing on protagonists' entry into adulthood: in 2018, Anna Burns’s ‘Milkman’ won the renowned Booker Prize, and Sally Rooney’s ‘Normal People’, which had also been longlisted, went on to become a bestseller and to be turned into a critically acclaimed TV series.
In this course, we will trace the longer literary history of Irish coming-of-age narratives. The key hypothesis that this course will test and interrogate against three novels published in three different decades (and a short excursion into cinematic representations) is that Irish coming-of-age narratives pick up on, challenge, and expand a particular line of tradition of the Irish Bildungsroman, which accentuates the specific difficulties and challenges associated with “Growing Up Irish” (Cahalan). In contrast to conventional accounts of the rise of the Bildungsroman in 19th-century British literature, we will locate the origins of this genre not in ‘Jane Eyre’ or ‘David Copperfield’, but we will posit James Joyce’s ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’ as foundational for the Irish coming-of-age novel. As the title of the seminar implies, we will specifically attempt to trace the legacy of representations of young protagonists’ ‘ire’, that is, the anger or deliberate deviance that has been identified as a typical characteristic of Irish Bildungsroman protagonists (cf. Mansouri).
On the basis of ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’ (1916), and with the help of selected secondary texts, we will begin the seminar by trying to distil the genre, form, and characteristics of the Irish Bildungsroman. Our next reading, Edna O’Brien’s ‘Country Girls’ (1960) will allow us to extend our working definition by investigating female perspectives on ‘growing up Irish’. We will relate Joyce and O’Brien’s ‘prototypes’ (assuming that this turns out to be a valid categorisation) to two later novels, Patrick McCabe’s ‘Butcher Boy’ (1992) – which we will only read in excerpts, focusing in greater detail on the 1997 film adaptation instead – and Rooney’s ‘Normal People’ (2018).
In order to facilitate a smooth class discussion, it is essential that students purchase the following editions of the novels. Especially in the case of Joyce’s novel, there are numerous editions, so please pick the correct (Oxford) one. ‘Country Girls’ is, unfortunately, no longer in print as a paperback, so I would ask you to please obtain the ‘Country Girls Trilogy’, which contains two additional texts by O’Brien. (If you can get your hands on a used paperback version of ‘Country Girls’, then that would serve well enough, too. But please make sure you do not confuse the novel with the play of the same name and by the same author, which was published by Faber & Faber in 2012.) It might be a good idea to order your copies once you have been formally registered for this seminar.
These are the editions we will be working with:
• Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Oxford University Press/Oxford World’s Classics, 2008. ISBN: 978-0-19-953644-3.
• O’Brien, Edna. The Country Girls Trilogy. Faber & Faber, 2019. ISBN: 978-0-571-35290-6.
• Rooney, Sally. Normal People. Faber & Faber, 2019. ISBN: 978-0-571-33465-0.
Works Cited
Cahalan, James M. “Female and Male Perspectives on Growing Up Irish in Edna O’Brien, John McGahern and Brian Moore.” Colby Quarterly 31.1 (1995): 55-73.
Mansouri, Shahriyar. The Modern Irish Bildungsroman: A Narrative of Resistance and Deformation. PhD Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2014.
Anmeldemodus
Die Auswahl der Teilnehmenden wird nach der Eintragung manuell vorgenommen.
Nutzer/-innen, die sich für diese Veranstaltung eintragen möchten,
erhalten nähere Hinweise und können sich dann noch gegen eine Teilnahme entscheiden.
