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The Vanishing World of The Islandman: Narrative and Nostalgia 1st ed. 2020 Edition Máiréad Nic Craith full chapter instant download
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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN
LITERARY ANTHROPOLOGY
Series Editors
Deborah Reed-Danahay
Department of Anthropology
The State University of New York at Buffalo
Buffalo, NY, USA
Helena Wulff
Department of Social Anthropology
Stockholm University
Stockholm, Sweden
This book series aims to publish explorations of new ethnographic objects
and emerging genres of writing at the intersection of literary and
anthropological studies. Books in this series will be grounded in ethnographic
perspectives and the broader cross-cultural lens that a nthropology brings to
the study of reading and writing. The series will explore the ethnography of
fiction, ethnographic fiction, narrative ethnography, creative nonfiction,
memoir, autoethnography, and the connections between travel literature
and ethnographic writing.
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2020
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Series Preface
v
vi SERIES PREFACE
ter writing skills in different genres, there are now courses on ethnographic
writing, anthropological writing genres, experimental writing, and even
creative writing taught by anthropologists. And increasingly, literary and
reading communities are attracting anthropological attention, including an
engagement with issues of how to reach a wider audience.
Palgrave Studies in Literary Anthropology publishes scholarship on the
ethnography of fiction and other writing genres, the connections between
travel literature and ethnographic writing, and internet writing. It also
publishes creative work such as ethnographic fiction, narrative ethnogra-
phy, creative non-fiction, memoir and autoethnography. Books in the
series include monographs and edited collections, as well as shorter works
that appear as Palgrave Pivots. This series aims to reach a broad audience
among scholars, students and a general readership.
Deborah Reed-Danahay and Helena Wulff
Co-Editors, Palgrave Studies in Literary Anthropology
Advisory Board
Ruth Behar, University of Michigan
Don Brenneis, University of California, Santa Cruz
Regina Bendix, University of Göttingen
Mary Gallagher, University College Dublin
Kirin Narayan, Australian National University
Nigel Rapport, University of St Andrews
Ato Quayson, University of Toronto
Julia Watson, Ohio State University
Acknowledgements
There are many institutions and individuals who should be thanked for mak-
ing this book possible. In the first instance, I wish to thank the Department
of Celtic Studies at Harvard University, who hosted me as a visiting scholar
in Spring 2018. Catherine McKenna, Joseph Falaky Nagy and Natasha
Sumner offered very interesting insights into the Irish cultural context at the
time that Tomás wrote his memoir, while Mary Violette ensured access to
numerous resources. A number of academics gave generously of their time
during my trips to Massachusetts. These include Brian Frykenberg, Philip
Deloria and Michael D. Jackson (all at Harvard University).
At Boston College, I had fruitful conversations with James H. Murphy,
Richard Kearney and Phillip O’Leary. Christian Dupont Burns (also at
Boston College) provided me with an original scan of Flann O’Brien’s
personal copy of An tOileánach, while the bookseller Stephen Griffin
gifted me with many useful books. A trip to the Irish Cultural Center of
Western New England afforded the opportunity to meet with Gerald
Costello, Thomas Moriarty and Sean F. Cahillane and to experience the
importance of an American-Irish cultural institution for descendants of
the islanders in Holyoke.
Inevitably, much of this research was conducted in Ireland. Seán Ó
Coileáin, emeritus Professor at the National University of Ireland (Cork),
gave generously of his time on several occasions to encourage and support
the idea for this book. A number of individuals on the Dingle Peninsula
gave advice. These include Mícheál de Mórdha and Daithí de Mórdha,
former staff at the Blasket Interpretative Centre, creative artists Lone
Beiter (pottery), Maria Simonds-Gooding (artist) and Antonio Fazio
vii
viii Acknowledgements
“In tracing the journey of a memoir from the sparsely populated Blasket Islands
into the world, Nic Craith chronicles the acquisition of literary ambitions, editorial
interventions and translational transformations. The originality of this contribu-
tion to literary anthropology resides in the skilled and surprising combination of
angles through which we witness both the memoirist and those who have appro-
priated him.”
—Regina F. Bendix, Professor of Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology,
University of Göttingen, Germany
“The beauty of this book, crafted by Máiréad Nic Craith with sensitivity and dedi-
cation, is the insight provided into The Islandman (and its ilk) without claiming
definitive answers or finally disambiguating its mysteries. It is a remarkable literary
journey between island and world, tradition and modernity, materiality and
nostalgia.”
—Nigel Rapport, Professor of Anthropological and Philosophical Studies,
University of St Andrews, UK
xi
xii PRAISE FOR THE VANISHING WORLD OF THE ISLANDMAN
“Ninety years after its first publication, Máiréad Nic Craith offers a welcome reex-
amination of Tomás Ó Criomhthain’s Blasket Island autobiography An tOileán-
ach. Situating it within the wider contexts of early twentieth-century ethnographies
and ethnographic theory, translation studies, the interface of orality and literacy,
and the history of the book, Nic Craith shows how Ó Criomhthain’s book fits into
the history of twentieth-century Western anthropology and literature.”
—Catherine McKenna, Margaret Brooks Robinson Professor of Celtic Languages
and Literatures, Harvard University, USA
Contents
4 Translating Place 63
From Place to Image 65
Translation and Anglicisation 71
Mapping and Landscape 78
xiii
xiv Contents
8 Irish-American Networks141
Cosmopolitan Connections 142
The Islandman and the US 143
The Literary Legacy 147
Reflective Nostalgia and Loss 151
Bibliography161
Index183
Previously Published Books
by Máiréad Nic Craith
Monographs
Narratives of Place, Belonging and Language: An Intercultural Perspec
tive, 2012.
Europe and the Politics of Language: Citizens, Migrants, Outsiders, 2006.
Culture and Identity Politics in Northern Ireland, 2003.
Plural Identities: Singular Narratives—the Case of Northern Ireland, 2002.
Malartú Teanga: An Ghaeilge i gCorcaigh sa Naoú hAois Déag, 1993.
An tOileánach Léannta, 1988.
xv
xvi Previously Published Books by Máiréad Nic Craith
My first trip to the Dingle Peninsula on the south-west coast of Ireland was
in 1977. As a young student learning the Irish language, my course required
that I spend a month living with an Irish-speaking family in the Gaeltacht
(Irish-speaking region). Although the Great Blasket Island was constantly
on the horizon during that visit, it was some years later before I actually
visited it for the first time. That visit sparked a life-long interest in a tradi-
tional way of life that has effectively disappeared. Later, as an undergradu-
ate in University College Cork, An tOileánach (The Islandman), the first
memoir written by a Blasket Islander, was a core reading for my Arts degree
(Ó Criomhthain 1929). I could hardly have anticipated how that book
would journey with me over a lifetime.
When subsequently, under the supervision of Prof. Seán Ó Coileáin at
University College Cork, I focused on this memoir for my master’s degree
(by thesis only), I began a love-affair with an island that has not dimin-
ished over time. A revised version of that thesis was published as An
tOileánach Léannta (The Learned Islandman), (Nic Craith 1988), and for
a time was one of the best-selling Irish-language books in Ireland. The
research questions of that first book focused on Tomás Ó Criomhthain,
the first island author.
In my early academic career, I was especially interested in the portrayal
of peasant writers across Europe as unlettered and uneducated. I explored
Tomás’s schooling and informal education on the Great Blasket Island as
well as his literary skills in Irish and in English. I was keen to ascertain
Tomás’s reading material and debunk the myth that writers such as Tomás
were unfamiliar with international newspapers and literature. The primary
xvii
xviii PROLOGUE
Every book aims to achieve something new and original. My key aim
with this book has been to bring the work of a historical, indigenous Irish-
language writer to a contemporary anthropological audience on an inter-
national scale. With few exceptions, the memoir has been critiqued
primarily in an Irish (language) context and within an Irish cultural frame-
work. Given the interdisciplinary nature of my own research career, I felt
it entirely appropriate to revisit the volume and set it in a new context that
is global and anthropological, and located in literary anthropology, which
is the focus of this series.
Dealing with written texts is hardly a new practice for anthropologists
(Nic Craith 2012). In 1973, Clifford Geertz compared the process of
PROLOGUE xix