Mittuniversitetet

This chapter examines the autobiographies of Liam O'Flaherty, looking at the idea of O'Flaherty as a kind of 'identity migrant', especially where an ideological stance is concerned. Here, the necessity of adapting to changing circumstances of new environments is seen as a sort of doubling, in which the mental landscape is rearranged so as to simultaneously accommodate ideologies of two worlds - that of O'Flaherty's 'state of origin' and that of his adopted world. Through O'Flaherty's travels and various engagements with disparate ideologies and political systems, the chapter maps out the tensions and contradictions evident in his ongoing sense of subjectivity.

This collection looks beyond Ireland metaphorically as well as geographically, moving beyond nationalism towards the culturally diverse, beyond a bilingual Ireland to a polyvocal one, beyond the imagined community towards a virtual one, beyond a territorial Ireland to an excentric one. The focus is on outsiders, ranging from Colm Tóibín's subversion of establishment norms to Paul Muldoon's immersion in Jewish discourse to John Banville's extensions of the parameters of Irishness to the Lass of Aughrim finding a new role through her exclusion from the domestic hearth. The contributors to the volume work mainly with poetry and prose fiction, but genres such as autobiography, the essay and song lyrics are also represented. The issues addressed all look 'beyond Ireland'. In considering the creative frictions and fictions that result from the dissolving of old loyalties, these essays examine contested concepts such as 'the nation', and attempt to shed light on global forces that demand cultural re-definitions and transformations. The world order that let loose the Celtic Tiger has brought, together with a diversified Ireland, new forms of dependence. It is one of the main aims of this book to explore how Irish writers have regarded this diversification and contested that dependence.