Varia: Trauma and the Irish Experience: The Example of M. J. Hyland’s 𝐶𝑎𝑟𝑟𝑦 𝑀𝑒 𝐷𝑜𝑤𝑛

Authors:

Pages: 200-210
DOI: https://doi.org/10.54664/OAJQ2634

Abstract:

The article analyses the philosophical features of M. J. Hyland’s novel 𝐶𝑎𝑟𝑟𝑦 𝑀𝑒 𝐷𝑜𝑤𝑛 (2006), spotlighting this text in the epistemological paradigm of post-postmodernism. The analysis considers some of the distinctive features of the Irish novel in the second half of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, such as anticolonial explications and the smashed type of identity of the characters. 𝐶𝑎𝑟𝑟𝑦 𝑀𝑒 𝐷𝑜𝑤𝑛 reveals the post-postmodern tendency of searching for the truth and explaining the nature of human beings as a combination of the humanitarian and the biophysical. The novel’s protagonist has a special superpower of detecting lies in the discourses produced by other characters. His inability to accept lies physically may be linked to the post-postmodern tendency of rejecting the hybrid combination of truth and untruth, typical of some kinds of postmodernist writing. The analysis also explores the representation of trauma in Hyland’s novel.

Keywords:

M. J. Hyland, post-postmodernism, Irish fiction, truth

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