O’Flaherty was born on August 28th, 1896, in Gort na gCapall, translated as “the field of horses,” on Inishmór the largest of the Aran Islands. He was born to a peasant family which plays largely into his writings along with the harshness of the Islands. Fumio Yoshioka of Okayama university, points out how it has “become, commonplace to emphasize the influence of this environment over O’Flaherty”. She shows the reader what O’Flaherty grew up in and around through the use of Patrick Sheeran’s words from his study of O’Flaherty “The Villages scattered on the rocky islands were a living witness to appalling misery and destitution. There is an old archive recording the frank voices of a parish priest who described those villages as ‘the most poverty—stricken hamlets in the kingdom, probably in the world’”. O’Flaherty himself said of the Island “I was born on a windswept rock and hate the soft growth of sun-baked lands where there is no frost in men’s bones. Swift thoughts and the swift flight of ravenous birds, and the squeal of hunted animals are to me a reality. I have seen the leaping salmon fly before the salmon-whale, and I have seen the sated buck horn his mate, and the wanderer leave his wife, in search of fresh bosoms, with the fire of joy in his eye.” (qdt in ricorso.net). Along with “There, not only extreme poverty, but the very position of the island foster in the human mind those devils of suspicion and resentment which make ingratitude seem man’s strongest vice. The surrounding sea, constantly stirred into fury by storms that cut off communication with the mainland, always maintains in the mind of the inhabitants a restless anxiety, which has a strong bearing on character, sharpening the wits and heightening the energy,...
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... O’Flaherty would pass in 1984 at the age of 88.
Works Cited
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Kinnell, Galway. “After Making Love We Hear Footsteps.” The Norton Introduction to Literature. Portable 10th ed. Ed. Alison Booth and Kelly J. Mays. New York: Norton, 2011. 490-491. Print.
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Included within the anthology The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction,1[1] are the works of great Irish authors written from around three hundred years ago, until as recently as the last decade. Since one might expect to find in an anthology such as this only expressions and interpretations of Irish or European places, events or peoples, some included material could be quite surprising in its contrasting content. One such inclusion comes from the novel Black Robe,2[2] by Irish-born author Brian Moore. Leaving Ireland as a young man afforded Moore a chance to see a great deal of the world and in reflection afforded him a great diversity of setting and theme in his writings. And while his Black Robe may express little of Ireland itself, it expresses much of Moore in his exploration into evolving concepts of morality, faith, righteousness and the ever-changing human heart.
Murphy, B. & Shirley J. The Literary Encyclopedia. [nl], August 31, 2004. Available at: http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2326. Access on: 22 Aug 2010.
Raiger, Michael. “’’Large and Startling Figures’: The Grotesque and the Sublime in the Short Stories of Flannery O’Connor.’” Seeing into the Life of Things: Essays on Literature and Religious Experience (1998): 242-70. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec.
Friedman, Melvin J. Introduction. Critical Essays on Flannery O’Connor. Ed. Melvin J. Friedman and Beverly Lyon Clark. Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1985.
Rochette-Crawley, S. (2004) James T. Farrell. The Literary Encyclopedia. April 2, 2004. Retrieved on May 13, 2009 from http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1487
Walsh’s, Ford’s and Toibin’s works help influence the way Ireland is perceived nowadays. Despite what some people may think, Ireland and it’s people lives do not revolve around Pubs and alcohol. The country relies heavily on their culture and customs. Religion, music and food are three ways my family celebrates our Irish heritage. Those three parts of the Irish culture are only a small portion of what it means to be Irish.
The tales were rediscovered around 1880 inspiring the Irish literary revival in romantic fiction by writers such as Lady Augusta Gregory and the poetry and dramatic works of W.B. Yeats. These works wer...
Ronsley, Joseph, ed., Myth and Reality in Irish Literature, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, Canada, 1977
Asals, Frederick. Flannery O'Connor : The Imagination of Extremity. University of Georgia Press; Reissue edition. Athens, Georgia, 2007.
The main recurring theme in Flannery O’Connor’s stories is the use of violence towards characters in order to give them an eye-opening moment in which they finally realize their true self in relation to the rest of society and openly accept insight into how they should act or think. This theme of violence can clearly be seen in three works by Flannery O’Connor: A Good Man is Hard to Find, Good Country People, and Everything That Rises Must Converge.
In Joyce’s stories “Eveline”, “Counterparts” and the “Dead”, the theme of escape and responsibility is represented by the characters desire to flee their lives. These stories symbolize Joyce’s interpretation of life in Ireland. With careful analysis it can be inferred that the miserable situations portrayed in these stories can be directly tied into how readers may view life in Ireland. Like the characters in Dubliners people desired a better life for themselves in and out of Ireland. The themes common to these stories show an appreciation to opportunity and success in the world. The themes of escape and responsibility present in a readers mind a looking glass for viewing life and society.
McCann et al. Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies, 1994, 95-109).
Tuma, Keith, ed. Anthology of Twentieth-Century British & Irish Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.