Stories on the Margins: A Study of Short Fiction by Julia O’Faolain, Eilís Ní Dhuibhne, and Evelyn Conlon

• Thesis title in Czech: Příběhy na okraji: Studie o krátkých povídkách Julie O'Faolainové, Eilís Ní Dhuibhneové a Evelyn Conlonové
• Thesis title in English: Stories on the Margins: A Study of Short Fiction by Julia O’Faolain, Eilís Ní Dhuibhne, and Evelyn Conlon
• Key words: povídka|irské spisovatelky|marginalita|feminismus
• English key words: short story|Irish women writers|marginality|feminism
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2023/2024
• Thesis type: diploma thesis
• Thesis language: angličtina
• Department: Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK)
• Supervisor: doc. Clare Wallace, M.A., Ph.D.
• Author: hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept.
• Date of registration: 25.03.2024
• Date of assignment: 27.03.2024
• Administrator's approval: approved
• Confirmed by Study dept. on: 03.04.2024
• Submitted/finalized: no

Guidelines

Since the Irish Revival the literary criticism of Irish short story has been predominantly male-oriented. The genre as such has always remained somewhat on the margins of the literary discourse and women’s contributions have been even more on the margins. However, the short story has been a powerful instrument for women writers allowing them to explore the often-hidden lives of their protagonists in the conservative Catholic context of twentieth century Ireland. Women’s short stories provide a different sort of canon to that of well-known Irish writers such as Frank O’Connor, Liam O’Flaherty or James Joyce. Their work departs from typical narratives depicting a protagonist (often male) at odds with the complex modernity of the world around them. But this alternative canon has only more recently become the focus of sustained scholarly interest. It is only with the arrival of academic work from Elke D’hoker regarding the genre of the short story from the female authorship that the literary discourse has begun to credit Irish female authors as no less deserving the attention as their male counterparts. Nevertheless, attention still is not given to the short fiction of many Irish women authors, regardless of their popularity among the readers. This project will focus on three lesser known, but significant, authors of short fiction, namely Eilís Ní Dhuibhne, Evelyn Conlon, and Julia O’Faolain. My research will focus on the exploration of their short stories with its primary focus on how their three collections – Eating Women Is Not Recommended, My Head is Opening, Man in the Cellar – not only challenge the orthodoxies of twentieth century Ireland, but also challenge the conventions of the Irish short story as a genre. I will argue that women’s short fiction not only provides an invaluable insight into the conventions of the Catholic Irish society, but also offers space to explore the genre of short story taking it further from the existing literary canon. The first chapter will map out the genre of short fiction in contemporary literary discourse, and in Ireland. I will focus on the female authorship and its belated recognition in the scholarly works. The second chapter will examine Julia O’Faolain (1932-2020) an Irish novelist and short story writer, namely her collection Man in the Cellar (1974). O’Faolain belongs to the lesser-known writers of the short fiction despite being a successful novelist of the generation of John McGahern, Edna O’Brien, and Jennifer Johnston. The stories in Man in the Cellar, much as her novels, are set internationally, often in different time periods, on different continents, giving her work an international dimension. Her stories often deal humorously with harsh realities. Since the seven stories of O’Faolain’s collection experiment with settings, narrative styles, and form, I will aim to explore how the short fiction genre works in terms of the topics she writes about: domestic abuse, bodily autonomy, unrequited love. The third chapter should focus on Evelyn Conlon’s collection My Head is Opening (1987) whose main characteristic is female rage. The collection is particularly sobering and realistic against the previous two with its stories pushing boundaries in the conservative Ireland. The fourth chapter will examine Eilís Ní Dhuibhne’s collection Eating Women is Not Recommended (1991). Ní Dhuibhne is the writer of a later generation than O’Faolain and is the most critically explored of the three. The collection is primarily focused on women and their mundane realities. Here I would also like to focus on how the genre allows her to tell the women’s stories from a bizarrely humorous perspective. Last chapter will serve as a conclusion enumerating the results of this research. I believe that this research will highlight the importance of studying less known, marginalised authors, in marginalised genres, allowing the short story genre its due credit, as well as women authors their well-deserved space for an academic exploration of their work.

References

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