(Post-)colonial Identities in Exile: Pádraic Ó Conaire’s Fragmented Realities

Abstract

The work of Pádraic Ó Conaire, a name that has been very much forgotten, meant a turning point in the literature written in the Irish language that was being produced at the beginning of the twentieth century. Some of the topics that populate the narrative of this caustic writer are the consequences of religion and superstition on the Irish population, the mistrust of authority, poverty, the tramp, the deranged, or alcohol abuse. The Irish individual is represented as an outcast, tormented by its own condition and identity, but also as subject to a larger system of binary opposites, such as colonial oppression and Irish nationalism. This approach to Irish literature went against the prevailing taste and Ó Conaire’s work was read with suspicion and gradually forgotten. Ó Conaire’s magnum opus Deoraíocht [Exile], published in 1910, combines the dream of a national past and the alienation of the present in the life of an Irish migrant that intends to represent a collectivity. The primary focus of this MA Thesis will be the novel Exile, as it intends to examine the potential colonial status of Ireland in literary representation. Therefore, I will analyze how the (post-)colonial theoretical framework applies to the relationship between Ireland and the United Kingdom and how this shaped the unprecedented literature of Pádraic Ó Conaire.