Final Report Summary - FAMINE (Relocated Remembrance: the Great Famine in Irish (Diaspora) Fiction, 1847-1921.)
The Great Irish Famine (1845-50), an era of mass starvation and emigration, received renewed scholarly attention from the mid 1990s, when a spate ofsignificant sociohistorical studies on the Great Famine were published. While scholars such as Christopher Morash and Margaret Kelleher published pioneering studies of representations of the Great Famine in literature, a significant corpus of works of Famine fiction written on both sides of the Atlantic between 1847 and 1921 remained underexplored. Relocated Remembrance has mapped out this corpus of 130 texts, with the aim of examining the developments of Famine memory in these texts across generations and across space, in the main diasporas where Famine emigrants and their descendants settled: Britain, the United States and Canada. Furthermore, the project sought to establish which generic aspects of fiction played a role in the transmission and reconfiguration of Famine memories.
The project concludes that the traumatic paradigm which has dominated Irish (Famine) studies and memory studies has to be reassessed. Contrary to initial expectations, the ways in which the Famine past is negotiated in the earliest fiction is very explicit. Famine trauma does not primarily manifest itself through silence; rather, texts contain traces of the Famine past and use specific narratological techniques (focalization, following patterns) and narrative templates to negotiate the most excruciating aspects of the Famine past. Texts from later date often use the rhetoric of trauma to discuss the Famine, but at the same belie this traumatic discourse by the explicit ways in which they represent the Famine and its effects.
With the passage of time, the Famine past becomes more strongly integrated in the narrative consciousness of works of fiction: the main characters who focalise the events have close experiences with starvation, death and distress. Moreover, while in the earliest works of Famine fiction, scenes of famine are often confined to the closed off space of the cabin, suggesting a sense of containment, texts from later date increasingly depict famine in public settings, thereby implying its prevalence at all levels of society. Over time, Famine memory also becomes more polemic and politicised. Many works of fiction after 1860 use Famine memory as a rhetorical weapon in relation to the politics of the Land War and nationalist discourses. The memory of the Famine is thus instrumentalised in a number of ways for the production of cultural identities.
The project demonstrates that, especially in the earliest stages after the Famine diaspora, one can speak of a specific diasporic configuration of Famine memory that dispels the Famine past to the margins of the narrative in a way to uphold an idealised image of the homeland. This can be explained by the difficult integration of the Irish in their transatlantic host communities. The research suggests that ethnic integration results in a more emphatic acknowledgement of Famine suffering and the ways in which post-Famine Ireland has been drastically affected by the period of mass starvation. As a result, the texts suggest the possibilities to reconstruct new Ireland in diaspora. Famine fiction written for Irish-Canadians and Irish-Americans of the second and third generation becomes more strongly intertwined with the cultural legacies of the host societies, such as the frontier myth, the Middle Passage, Republicanism and the slavery past. As such, Famine fiction written in diaspora becomes more multidirectional with the passage of time. Furthermore, Famine memory gradually moves from ethnically specific communities of descendants of Irish immigrants to mainstream North-American culture. This is illustrated by the fact that, by the end of the nineteenth century, Famine fiction starts to become published in mainstream American and Canadian journals, such as Harper’s Magazine and Scribner’s Magazine.
Finally, Relocated Remembrance shows that Famine fiction is marked by generic instability in that the novels and short stories often include intertextual passages from political treatises, socioeconomic reports, journalistic accounts, travel narratives and historiography and adopt the register of these genres. The generic excursions towards historiography in particular increase in Famine fiction written in the later decades that the project covers, thereby indicating that the passage of time which creates more distance from the events themselves leads to a stronger dependence on existing tropes and rhetoric that together form a famine mnemonic register. The projects findings have been published in numerous journal articles and book chapters, as well as in the edited anthology Recollecting Hunger (Irish Academic Press, 2012) and Global Legacies of the Great Irish Famine (Peter Lang, 2014).
The project concludes that the traumatic paradigm which has dominated Irish (Famine) studies and memory studies has to be reassessed. Contrary to initial expectations, the ways in which the Famine past is negotiated in the earliest fiction is very explicit. Famine trauma does not primarily manifest itself through silence; rather, texts contain traces of the Famine past and use specific narratological techniques (focalization, following patterns) and narrative templates to negotiate the most excruciating aspects of the Famine past. Texts from later date often use the rhetoric of trauma to discuss the Famine, but at the same belie this traumatic discourse by the explicit ways in which they represent the Famine and its effects.
With the passage of time, the Famine past becomes more strongly integrated in the narrative consciousness of works of fiction: the main characters who focalise the events have close experiences with starvation, death and distress. Moreover, while in the earliest works of Famine fiction, scenes of famine are often confined to the closed off space of the cabin, suggesting a sense of containment, texts from later date increasingly depict famine in public settings, thereby implying its prevalence at all levels of society. Over time, Famine memory also becomes more polemic and politicised. Many works of fiction after 1860 use Famine memory as a rhetorical weapon in relation to the politics of the Land War and nationalist discourses. The memory of the Famine is thus instrumentalised in a number of ways for the production of cultural identities.
The project demonstrates that, especially in the earliest stages after the Famine diaspora, one can speak of a specific diasporic configuration of Famine memory that dispels the Famine past to the margins of the narrative in a way to uphold an idealised image of the homeland. This can be explained by the difficult integration of the Irish in their transatlantic host communities. The research suggests that ethnic integration results in a more emphatic acknowledgement of Famine suffering and the ways in which post-Famine Ireland has been drastically affected by the period of mass starvation. As a result, the texts suggest the possibilities to reconstruct new Ireland in diaspora. Famine fiction written for Irish-Canadians and Irish-Americans of the second and third generation becomes more strongly intertwined with the cultural legacies of the host societies, such as the frontier myth, the Middle Passage, Republicanism and the slavery past. As such, Famine fiction written in diaspora becomes more multidirectional with the passage of time. Furthermore, Famine memory gradually moves from ethnically specific communities of descendants of Irish immigrants to mainstream North-American culture. This is illustrated by the fact that, by the end of the nineteenth century, Famine fiction starts to become published in mainstream American and Canadian journals, such as Harper’s Magazine and Scribner’s Magazine.
Finally, Relocated Remembrance shows that Famine fiction is marked by generic instability in that the novels and short stories often include intertextual passages from political treatises, socioeconomic reports, journalistic accounts, travel narratives and historiography and adopt the register of these genres. The generic excursions towards historiography in particular increase in Famine fiction written in the later decades that the project covers, thereby indicating that the passage of time which creates more distance from the events themselves leads to a stronger dependence on existing tropes and rhetoric that together form a famine mnemonic register. The projects findings have been published in numerous journal articles and book chapters, as well as in the edited anthology Recollecting Hunger (Irish Academic Press, 2012) and Global Legacies of the Great Irish Famine (Peter Lang, 2014).