THE GATHERING

Below are a series of questions concerning Anne Enright's The Gathering. Feel free to draw from them or develop your own.

For this week’s blog, you might want to do some research on the economic phenomenon known as “The Celtic Tiger.” Take into account the incredible poverty that has pervaded the novels we’ve read, and explore the effects of “wealth” and “materialism” on these characters.

While The Gathering doesn’t necessarily focus on the Catholic Church, it does bring up issues of child molestation. For this blog, you might want to do some research into the wave of molestation scandals that rocked the Catholic Church in the 90s (and sadly, are still haunting us today). Some of you may have recalled the infamous incident of Sinead O’Conner ripping a picture of the pope on Saturday Night Live. Click on the link below to watch this video (youtube won’t allow embedding for this particular video):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYw8JR1N90o

Do some research to contextualize this video and explore why O’Conner would do such an incredibly politically symbolic act. Explore how The Gathering might be a part of a generational stand against child abuse in Ireland.

You might also want to research alcoholism and Ireland for this blog and explore how it relates to the novel. How does drinking take on symbolic proportions in this text?

In Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man we explored issues dealing with time and temporalities. Return to Tobias Boes’ essay, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and the “Individuating Rhythm of Modernity,” and explore the ways in which The Gathering plays with time, history, and narrative.

The Gathering is in part a portrait of an Irish family. How would you describe the dynamics of this family? What might be symbolic of this family dynamic?

BREAKFAST ON PLUTO and “Lacanian ‘Pussy’: Towards a Psychoanalytic Reading of Patrick McCabe’s Breakfast on Pluto” by Peter Mahon

Not many people chose to blog on historical contexts last week, so I wanted to reprise this discussion question in hopes that someone might help us with some background: Patrick McCabe opens the novel with quite a bit of Irish history. Choose a date or event to research for this blog and explain how it might apply to the novel. You might want to research William of Orange, The Troubles, Bloody Sunday, the 1922 partition of Ireland, or the Belfast Good Friday Agreement of 1998.

Pasted above is a segment from a documentary entitled The Rocky Road to Dublin by filmmaker Peter Lennon . For your blog this week, feel free to view this documentary in its entirety (it’s all on youtube) and explore the depictions of 1960s Ireland in the documentary as juxtaposed to our vibrant main character, Pussy Braden.

http://www.archive.org/details/JohnMacKenzieWhateverYouSaySayNothingaSeamusHeaneypoem

Pasted above is a link to John MacKenzie reading “Whatever You Say, Say Nothing,” a poem by Irish poet Seamus Heaney, which Mahon references in his essay. How does Mahon interpret this poem? What is the relationship between the meaning in this poem and aspects of Breakfast on Pluto?

This week’s essay relies heavily on Jacques Lacan to explain its arguments. For your blog this week, read through this online lecture on Lacan put forth by Purdue University: http://www.cla.purdue.edu/academic/engl/theory/psychoanalysis/lacandevelop.html

Then, explain in your own words how Lacan’s ideas might apply to this novel. Feel free to agree of disagree with Mahon’s use of Lacan’s theories.

On page 445, Mahon states, “The triumph of McCabe’s text thus lies in its ability to open up a challenging, but nonetheless exciting and imaginative psycho-political space that is situated beyond the silent dynamics of phallic law, authority, and signification that shape fantasies of an apolitical humanity in Northern Ireland.” What do you think he means by this statement and how does it apply to the novel?

Last week, Fay wrote a brilliant blog analyzing Patrick/Pussy’s relationship with his mother. http://introtothenoveltheirishtradition.blogspot.com/2010/04/life-and-times-of-patrick-braden.html

For this week’s blog, use the Mahon article to expand upon Fay’s arguments, and feel free to develop your own analysis in terms of Pussy’s complex relationship with her mother.

There are many moments of violence in Breakfast on Pluto. Choose one of these moments in the novel and do a close reading on one of these moments. How does McCabe depict this moment of violence? How does Pussy react to these moments? What is the significance of her reaction?

EXTRA CREDIT

Dear Students,

I rarely, if ever, give extra-credit, but there are two talks coming up in our English Department that I think warrant this gesture.

Below is an email from John Gleeson detailing the events. To receive extra credit, you will have to attend one of these lectures (duh!) and post an extra blog about it. For this extra credit you will receive either

a) a "free" pass on a blog
0r
b) a "free" pass on comments for a week.
or
c) five points extra credit on your final grade.

Please email me privately as to what option you would like to take in exchange for your extra credit.

A chara, dear friends of Celtic Studies,

You’re warmly invited to be with us for what promises to be a fascinating presentation on the work of Milwaukee’s own Jeremiah Curtin.

'Myths, Tales or Stories? : Jeremiah Curtin's Indian and Irish Collections' will be presented by John Eastlake, from the department of Folklore at University College Cork (Ireland). The presentation will take place in Curtin Hall (named for Jeremiah Curtin), room 368 , at 4:00pm on Thursday, April 22nd .

Ethnologist, folklorist, and ‘mythologist’, Jeremiah Curtin, made a
crucial contribution the development of Irish learning, ethnology and
folklore at the end of the nineteenth century. Curtin (1835-1906) is
one of the more remarkable figures of a period not lacking in
larger-than-life personalities. He was raised in Wisconsin, graduated
Harvard College in 1863, and served in the United States' legation to
Russia in 1864. In 1883 he took a post with the Bureau of American
Ethnology (BAE) in what would become the Smithsonian Institute. He
also worked as a translator, with eventual commercial success,
allowing him to pursue his own interests more freely. His primary
interest throughout his life remained the acquisition of languages for
the purpose of collecting myths and folklore from diverse 'primitive'
cultures. He was purported to have been competent in 70 languages,
including Irish, by the time of his death. His childhood home on 92nd
and Grange is preserved in the care of the Milwaukee County Historical Society.

In this paper, Curtin's fieldwork with Native Americans and in Ireland
will be addressed, paying particular attention to how Curtin evaluated
the myths, tales, stories and other materials he collected.

John Eastlake is an IRCHSS Post-Doctoral Fellow hosted by Roinn an Bhéaloidis in University College Cork. Eastlake completed his PhD in Irish Studies in 2008 at the Centre for Irish Studies, National University of Ireland, Galway. His doctoral work examined the production and reception of collaboratively-produced 'Native autobiographies' representing the life-stories of Irish and Native American authors/subjects.

His new project is entitled: ‘Jeremiah Curtin: Cross-cultural, Collaborative Textual Production of Irish and Native American Mythologies’. This study is evaluating Curtin's Irish publications in comparison with his publications of Native American myths, allowing for a greater understanding of Curtin and his work, and exploring a further instance in the intersections of Native American and Irish cultures.

Eastlake is co-editor of Anáil an Bhéil Bheo: Orality and Modern Irish Culture, (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009), and has written widely
on Native Autobiographies such as An tOiléanach/The Islandman and Black Elk Speaks.

Also of interest to fans of Celtic Studies, will be a presentation this Friday, April 16th by Daniel Brown, from the Department of English. Daniel will talk about ‘ The Highland Clearances and Politics of Memory’ in Curtin Hall 118 at 3:00pm.

Look forward to seeing you at one or both of these events.

John Gleeson
_______________________________________________

BREAKFAST ON PLUTO

In addition to your blog on Breakfast on Pluto, don’t forget that you must post a paragraph explaining what you would like to do for your final project. You must also include some feedback pertaining to your peers’ project in your comments.

Also, don't forget if you're posting an online artifact essay this week to send it to my email, as well.

Below are questions that I hope will inspire you as we venture into the life and times of Pussy Braden. This should be quite a fun ride…

Patrick McCabe opens the novel with quite a bit of Irish history. Choose a date or event to research for this blog and explain how it might apply to the novel. You might want to research William of Orange, The Troubles, The IRA, The Orangemen, Bloody Sunday, the 1922 partition of Ireland, or the Belfast Good Friday Agreement of 1998.

Breakfast on Pluto is very much a novel about borders—both physical and mental. Explain some of the ways this book portrays the concept of borders and borderlands. What is the significance of “Pluto” in this novel? How does Pussy’s sexuality play into this idea of borders?

How would you describe the way in which this novel is narrated? What is the significance of this narration style and how is it similar and/or different to some novels we have read in the past?

Merriam-Webster defines “transgender” as “a person who identifies with or expresses a gender identity that differs from the one which corresponds to the person's sex at birth.” How does the theme of transgender in this novel play into the larger political conflict between Catholics and Protestants in this novel? How might Pussy “trouble” questions of identity, particularly Irish identity, in this novel?

“A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and the 'Individuating Rhythm' of Modernity” and PORTRAIT continued...

Feel free to use these questions if you like, or develop your own. You can also respond to another student's blog or continue a discussion from our previous week.

• For this blog, you might want to look up the terms “epiphany,” Bildungsroman, “leitmotif,” “modernism,” or “chronotope” and see how these terms relate to the novel. To gain a great historical perspective, feel free to look up Easter 1916, The Gaelic League, The 1913 Lockout, James Connelly and the Irish Citizens Army, and Patrick Pearse to get a better sense of the turbulent politics of Ireland in the early twentieth century and how they relate to some of the issues raised in the latter part of Portrait. If you’re staying in this weekend, you might want to rent a recent film about the Irish uprising entitled The Wind That Shakes the Barley, and compare some of the themes in that film with the novel.

• I love when students exert themselves creatively, and I think A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man tends to cause its readers to reflect on their own development and individual epiphanies. For this blog, compose an account of an epiphany you may have had in your life, but write it in James Joyce’s style.

• In his essay “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and the “Individuating Rhythm of Modernity,” Tobias Boes writes,

“Like Stephen Dedalus, Ireland during the early years of the twentieth century was tossed back and forth between two different ways of representing temporal experience, and two different conceptions of historical development: on the one hand, that of the Irish Renaissance, for which real improvements in Ireland could be achieved only through the revival of the cultural values of a bygone era, and, on the other hand, that of progressivism, according to which the hope of the nation lay in a break with the past and a corresponding leap into modernity” (769).

What does Boes mean by these statements? Where do you see this tension in the novel? Cite specific examples from the text.

• What does Boes mean by “individuating rhythms”? How does it compare to other “rhythms” in the novel?

• Compare the way in which Wilde and Joyce discuss the role of the artist in society. Look specifically on pages 219-221 and the argument between Stephen and Davin. Does the artist owe a debt to the nation, especially to the emerging nation that Ireland was at the turn of the century?