Term of Award
Spring 2018
Degree Name
Master of Arts in English (M.A.)
Document Type and Release Option
Thesis (open access)
Copyright Statement / License for Reuse
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Department
Department of Literature and Philosophy
Committee Chair
Howard Keeley
Committee Member 1
Dustin Anderson
Committee Member 2
Joe Pellegrino
Abstract
There is a long history of returning to a collective past or history during periods of cultural anxiety in human history. In what I term late-imperial anxiety comes a slew of writers returning to mythology and folklore in response to changing cultural and political environments around them. T.C. Boyle is living in a vastly changing America during the 1960s and 70s when he writes and publishes his first novel, Water Music. Boyle participates in the tradition of hearkening to the past to face the future by drawing from popular Irish mythology for his novel. In it he adapts popular heroes like Cú Chulainn into a familiar, yet innovative, new form in response to America’s fast-growing disillusionment domestically and abroad
Recommended Citation
Mabry, Connor, "Imperial Anxiety and Irish Myth: A Case-Study of T.C. Boyle’s Water Music" (2018). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 1769.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/etd/1769
Research Data and Supplementary Material
No
