Exile in Irish Literature

[Matterhorn]

Hello!
I just joined the forum, this is my first thread and I wanted to ask for your help.
I am a student in a Spanish University, at present I am following this
post-graduate course about exile in Irish literature.
I have to do an essay about this topic, I have to analyze a literary
text focusing on the topic of exile.
I was wondering if you could recommend me an Irish short story dealing
with this topic.
It has to be fiction. I was thinking about something like Angela's
ashes, some story about the migration of the Irish to the states, but
a short story will be easier to analyze...
Many thanks for your time and your help!
Regards

[FionaullaM]

I recently discovered Frank O'Connor in my search to try and understand my Irish background (blood); his work is a softer version of life in Ireland then, when things were poor. An awful lot of Australian writers are Irish in exile, and probably other new world places because of the huge emigration in 19th century. It fascinates me how truly different Irish are from English even if you are third or fourth generation New World. Basically it is the Irish pride in knowing something else is happening beyond the material world that English never understood and always hated, often brutally. In your search surnames will help.

[Scheherazade]

How about "Ballad of Reading Gaol" by Oscar Wilde?

[wateredwhisky]

I'd say definitely try out something either by Wilde, Joyce, or Yeats. All of them had a very...well, interesting relationship with their country of origin. Joyce spent most of his adult life elsewhere, and they all have some insightful opinions on the IRA, etc.

[mayneverhave]

Hello!
I just joined the forum, this is my first thread and I wanted to ask for your help.
I am a student in a Spanish University, at present I am following this
post-graduate course about exile in Irish literature.
I have to do an essay about this topic, I have to analyze a literary
text focusing on the topic of exile.
I was wondering if you could recommend me an Irish short story dealing
with this topic.
It has to be fiction. I was thinking about something like Angela's
ashes, some story about the migration of the Irish to the states, but
a short story will be easier to analyze...
Many thanks for your time and your help!
Regards

I would look at either Joyce or Beckett - but probably closer at Joyce. Both left Ireland and lived in work in Continental Europe. Beckett primarily wrote in French (and subsequently translated his own work into English).

A major theme in Joyce is exile - as Joyce felt he had to put himself into self-exile from Ireland in order to become an artist. If you've read Ulysses, you'll see that this has parallels in the character of Stephen Dedalus, who is forced to return to Ireland for his mother's death, stays for an extended time, and is (for the time) a failed artist.

Exile also figures into his other novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I cannot say regarding Finnegans Wake or Dubliners.

[Michael T]

Exile also figures into his other novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I cannot say regarding Finnegans Wake or Dubliners.


You could check out the final short story in Joyce's 'The Dubliners' called 'The Dead'. It might be just what you are looking for. :)

[WICKES]

Oscar Wilde wasn't really an exile. He was too wealthy and upper class. He loved Oxford and mixing with English aristocrats (he once said "the first thing I lost at Oxford was my Irish accent"!)

Many Irish people went to live in England as well as the New world. Most of the Beatles were of Irish descent btw. I don't know, but I would guess that more Irish moved to London from the 1840s onward than to New York.

[mmccall7]

You could check out the final short story in Joyce's 'The Dubliners' called 'The Dead'. It might be just what you are looking for. :)

backed.

[mmccall7]

Joyce's short stories (Dubliners) are more stories of paralysis and, i would say, emotional or relational exile.

[prendrelemick]

Have a look at Edna O'Brian's, August is a Wicked Month, if you want something different than the usual suspects