Title
"A Soft Lad the Like of You": Complex Father-Son Relationships in Three "Millennial" Irish Texts
Term of Award
Summer 2010
Degree Name
Master of Arts in English (M.A.)
Document Type and Release Option
Thesis (restricted to Georgia Southern)
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
Joe Pellegrino
Committee Member 2
John Murray
Committee Member 3
n/a
Abstract
This thesis addresses the complex relationship between fathers and sons in three highly successful literary texts that grapple with Irish nationalism: Sydney Owenson's The Wild Irish Girl, J.M. Synge's The Playboy of the Western World, and Hugo Hamilton's The Speckled People. Each text comes from a different historical moment, but each of these moments is distinguished by major change, a change so paradigm-shifting as to be worthy of the adjective millennial. While many literary critics have paid huge attention to the figure of Ireland as mother - and, indeed, Ireland in other female roles (Old Woman, beautiful young queen, fabulous Sky Woman) - few have interrogated what role dynamic father-son relationships have in stories; whether novels or plays, conscious of shifting political, social, and cultural realities in Ireland. It is with in this vacuum that I propose the literary device, the father and son trope, as an effective means for developing a discourse on the power struggle that is colonialism.
Recommended Citation
Bruner, Marla Suzanne, ""A Soft Lad the Like of You": Complex Father-Son Relationships in Three "Millennial" Irish Texts" (2010). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 189.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/etd/189
Research Data and Supplementary Material
No