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Biography and Autobiography: Essays on Irish and Canadian History and Literature PDF

305 Pages·1993·14.989 MB·English
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BIOGRAPHY AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY .', "" ' ~, :.: . "." . ;'", I. : . ',! ~ .", .. ' . \ '\ BIOGRAPHY AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY Essays on Irish and Canadian History and Literature Edited by James Noonan Carleton University Press Ottawa 1993 ©Carleton University Press Inc. 1993 Printed and bound in Canada Carleton General List 24 Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Main entry under title: Biography and autobiography: essays on Irish and Cana dian history and literature Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-88629-208-5 (casebound) ISBN 0-88629-209-3 (paperback) 1. Ireland-Biography-History and criticism-Congresses. 2. Biog raphy as a literary form-Congresses. 3. Authors, Irish-Biography History and criticism-Congresses. 4. Irish-Canada-History-Con gresses. I. Noonan, James. II. Canadian Association for Irish Studies. Conference (1991 : Carleton University). CT21.B461993 809'.93592'00417 C93-090430-3 Carleton University Press Distributed in Canada by: 160 Paterson Hall Carleton University Oxford University Press Canada 1125 Colonel By Drive 70 Wynford Drive Ottawa, Ontario Don Mills, Ontario K1S 5B6 M3C 1]9 (613) 788-3740 (416) 441-2941 Cover design: Richard Karayanis Typesetting: Carleton Production Centre Acknowledgements Carleton University Press gratefully acknowledges the support ex tended to its publishing programme by the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council. The Press would also like to thank the Department of Communi cations, Government of Canada, and the Government of Ontario through the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Recreation, for their assistance. Table of Contents Introduction James Noonan (Carleton University) ....................... 1 I APPROACHES TO BIOGRAPHY Biography and Theory, or, Beckett in the Bath Ira B. Nadel (Department of English, University of British Columbia) . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 The Nature of Irish Political Biography Paul Bew (Department of Politics, Queen's University, Belfast) ............................... 19 A Thematic Biography of Edmund Burke Conor Cruise O'Brien (Pro-Chancellor, Dublin University) ........................................ 27 Religion and Reticence: Paul Cardinal Cullen and the Problem of Religious Biography in Ireland Desmond Bowen (Research Professor, Carleton University) ...................................... 37 Writing Women into Irish History: The Biography of Fanny and Anna Parnell Jane Mclaughlin Cote (Ottawa) ............................ 61 Excavating Nora Brenda Maddox (London, England)......................... 71 Bio as it Auto be: from the Letters of George Bernard Shaw S. Finn Gallagher (Department of English, Trent University) ......................................... 87 Memories into Images in Modern Irish Painting James White (Director, National Gallery of Ireland, 1964-80).. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 II APPROACHES TO AUTOBIOGRAPHY On the Nature of Autobiography James Olney (Department of English, Louisiana State University) ................................ 109 Writing an Autobiography Garret FitzGerald (Former Taoiseach, Republic of Ireland) ... 123 Deformation of History in Blaskett Autobiographies CathalO Hainle (Trinity College, Dublin) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 133 Reading the Book of Himself: The Confessional Imagination of St. Augustine and Joyce Dominic Manganiello (Department of English, University of Ottawa) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 149 'No-man's-land': Beckett's Bilingualism as Autobiography Ann Beer (Faculty of Education, McGill University) ........................................ 163 The Circularity of the Autobiographical Form: A Study of Seamus Heaney's 'Station Island' Laura O'Connor (Columbia University). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 179 Sean O'Casey: The Ufe in the Letters Ronald Ayling (Department of English, University of Alberta) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 187 III STORIES OF THE IRISH IN CANADA 'The Follies of One and Twenty': D' Arcy McGee and Young Ireland: 1842-49 Robin B. Burns (Department of History, Bishop's University). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 205 Ogle Gowan: Aspiring Statesman and Stage Irishman Hereward Senior (Department of History, McGill University) ........................................ 215 Isaac Weld and the Continuity of Canadian Poetry D.M.R. Bentley (Department of English, University of Western Ontario) ............................. 223 Theory and Fiction: The Author Comments on At Face Value: The Ufe and Times of Eliza McCormack/John White Don Akenson (Department of History, Queen's University, Kingston) ............................. 237 Dressing Up History: A Critic Comments on Don Akenson's At Face Value: The Ufe and Times of Eliza McCormack/John White Roger Martin (Assistant Editor, McGill-Queen's University Press) .......................... 241 'They are treating us like mad dogs': A Donnelly Biographer's Problem James Reaney (Professor Emeritus, University of Western Ontario) ............................. 247 A Donnelly Biographer Creates: A selection of four poems and an excerpt from the puppet play Sleigh without Bells, with introductory note by James Noonan James Reaney. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 253 Between the tines: Biography, Drama and N. F. Davin Ken Mitchell (Department of English, University of Regina) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 263 Tracking Down the Irish 'Entertainers' in the Ottawa Valley Joan Finnigan (Hartington, Ontario) ........................ 273 Notes on Contributors 287 Introduction James Noonan Biography and autobiography have always held an attraction for readers, whether they be readers of history or of literature. Even when there has been disagreement over the value of biography and autobiography to the study of both disciplines, ordinary read ers have found the makers of history and literature endlessly in teresting. And while the critical emphasis on the importance of these genres has fluctuated in recent times, publishers have contin ued to embrace works on Parnell, Burke, Coleridge, Shaw, Beckett, Lady Gregory, Maud Gonne, Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Bowen, Ten nessee Williams, Sylvia Plath, Irving Layton, E.J. Pratt, and many others; they have welcomed works by authors on themselves, for example, Yeats, Gogarty, Sean O'Casey, Morley Callaghan, John Glassco, Gabrielle Roy, Thomas Merton, George Woodcock, and Garret fitzGerald; and they have published whatever letters they could get their hands on by all of these. Memoirs of living politi cians rank among the best sellers at any time. The impulse behind the thirst for these books seems to be that we are getting close to the real truth of a person, whether written by that person or another, and that this is a closer connection with the mind and heart of the person than whatever he or she has written in another genre. The desire behind the impulse is that of knowing how other-usually famous-people have conducted their lives, and the readiness to learn from these lives how ordinary mortals might think or conduct their own. The recent publication, or imminent publication, of biographies and autobiographies on and by Irish figures made this topic an ap pealing theme for the 1991 Conference of the Canadian Association for Irish Studies. There were, to name a few, books by Conor Cruise O'Brien on Edmund Burke, Brenda Maddox on Nora Joyce, Deirdre Bair on Samuel Beckett, Roy Foster on W.B. Yeats, Denis Donoghue on Yeats' memoirs, Ann Saddlemyer on George Yeats, Michael Hol royd's three volumes on Shaw, the continuing popularity of Peig Sayers and of writers of other island memoirs, Paul Bew on Parnell,

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