Traditional Irish literature has valorized women through idealized female stereotypes. This sanctification was promoted to liberate their nation and retrieve their motherland from their colonizers. ...Due to this idealization and abstraction, Irish women were deprived of any actual power amid the nationalistic, patriarchal culture. However, a precise distinction between men and women has become problematic in the increasingly multicultural world since the late twentieth century. This debunking of sexual essentialism often arises in tandem with other changes in politics, history, and religion. Patrick McCabe's Breakfast on Pluto illustrates this phenomenon. By reading Breakfast on Pluto, this paper discusses the protagonist's longing for an alternative sexuality, and why adhering to the traditional identity, whether personally, sexually, or nationally, is no longer feasible in contemporary Ireland. I argue that McCabe purports to challenge established fixities surrounding (post-)Trouble writing by adopting an extremely marginalized protagonist, thereby debilitating constructed foundations of gender and politics and anticipating an alternative framework of post-Trouble history.
Fairy tales have been an essential ingredient in children's literature. Canonical fairy tales passed down from generation to generation not only enrich children's imagination but connote significant ...values typical of the community. However, as time passes, contemporary writers often challenge these traditional values when they work on the same topic. This changing face is evidenced by Emma Donoghue's rewriting of classical tales. Based on my teaching of Donoghue's story 'The Tale of the Bird' alongside Andersen's 'Thumbelina' at a university in Hong Kong, this paper discusses the ever-evolving cultural values and the benefit of reading Donoghue via Andersen or vice versa in the literature class and beyond.
In Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” most inhabitants of the imaginary town fare well, but only on the condition that an unidentified child imprisoned in a dark room suffers: ...the well-being of most is founded on depriving the child of the inherent right to equality. Such an allegorical image of the suffering child embodies the hierarchical oppositions between adults and children, employers and employees, rich and poor, privileged and underprivileged. This paper analyzes the art of Le Guin’s story and its functioning as a testing ground for ethical theories.
For centuries women have been subordinated, repressed, and intimidated in different ways. However, women in the contemporary world are trying to reclaim their natural rights. Ireland is a complex ...case, because in the wake of nationalism, Catholicism, and some other socio-historical conventions, Irish women's movements were forced into the background until the last decades of the 20th century. Accordingly, Irish women have been constrained and daunted by the male discourses of nation, religion, and gender. Intriguingly, women in Taiwan have also been overburdened with pressures related to its unique political, social, and cultural legacies over the past few centuries. However, an increasing number of Taiwanese women have attempted to undo the patriarchy-driven phobia imposed on them to secure and consolidate their female identity. The traditions and transformations of women in both countries are well represented in works by Edna O'Brien and Li Ang. This paper is a comparative study of women in O'Brien's and Li's fiction. The focus is on investigating the ways in which women are subordinated in different historical and socio-cultural milieus, exploring how women react and fight against patriarchal discourses, and discussing the meanings and implications relevant to both writers and their fiction.
In the postmodern era, the notion of home has significant changes. An increasing number of eccentric characters, which used to be invisible in or excluded from classical discourse, have now ...increasingly come to the fore. Due to their eccentricities, these characters do not seem to belong in places that fit the traditional conception of home, and so they often inhabit imaginary places. Harry Potter calls Hogwarts home, the mutants of X-Men reside in the Professor's school, and the children in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children seek shelter in the orphanage run by Miss Peregrine. Through a reading of Ransom Riggs's 2011 book Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, I argue that people's craving for a secure home, along with the awareness of their ultimate homelessness, is a dilemma that has always troubled humans and continues to trouble them even in the twenty-first century.
Across the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has had far-reaching effects on many aspects of our everyday lives. Changes have also been apparent in the field of teaching since most teaching now has to be ...carried out online. Despite its drawbacks, this forced change to online instruction and learning has helped me reflect on my teaching. Based on my experience teaching literature at a university in Hong Kong, this article aims to highlight the lessons learned from the transformation caused by the pandemic.
The absence of female characters and their voices in William Golding's Lord of the Flies (1954) has been previously examined. On the surface, this fiction focuses on the struggle and survival of a ...group of boys who are left alone on a Pacific island against the background of nuclear warfare. The only presence of women in the story seems to be the aunt via a boy's narration. However, when approaching the fiction through the lens of ecofeminism, we can find a range of feminized entities which are metaphorically embodied in the natural surroundings of the secluded island. The boys' interactions with these feminized creatures in nature showcase a master mentality prevalent in human-centered and male-dominated discourses, a problem many ecofeminists manage to redress. Investigating Golding's Lord of the Flies from this angle, this paper discusses women's subordination, men's exploitation of nature, and the implications of reading Lord of the Flies from an ecofeminist perspective. I argue that an ecofeminist reading, which helps us complicate the interplay between men and women, women and nature, and the nature of patriarchal domination, contributes to our re-discovery of women's voices underlying Lord of the Flies.
Bodily discourse, constantly appropriated as a symbol of Irish famine and hunger in the wake of British maladministration of the land and its people since the Great Famine, is prevalent in Irish ...culture. However, this bodily discourse is dominated by nationalistic and patriarchal narratives. An increasing number of women in contemporary Ireland look at themselves anew through their own bodies. Through the reading of Eithne Strong’s poetry collection, Flesh: The Greatest Sin (1980), this paper discusses how the conflation of body and sin is entangled in the Irish context, how the female writer manages to untangle the fine line fabricated between the two categories and reaffirm her female identity simultaneously, and finally the significance of such an attempt in the history of Irish literature.
Chinua Achebe, a renowned African writer, explores the cultural conflicts between colonizers and the colonized in Nigeria in his works. Here, Chang investigates Achebe's ecological thinking in ...relation to colonialism. In his short story "The Sacrificial Egg," Achebe portrays the transformation of a once harmonious African land into a chaotic and polluted environment due to colonization. The story highlights the distinction between the colonizers, who prioritize commerce and technology, and the indigenous people, who maintain a sustainable and harmonious connection with nature. The protagonist, Julius, initially rejects African superstitions but eventually embraces his African identity and connection to the land. Achebe's ecological critique is evident through symbols, such as the typewriter and weighing machine, which represent the colonizers' attempt to civilize and exploit the indigenous people and their resources. Achebe's ecological thinking aligns with his anticolonial consciousness, emphasizing the importance of balance in human and natural ecology.
The signing of the contentious Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921 was a traumatic experience for many Irish people. This is not only because of the ensuing Irish Civil War, but the psychological adjustments ...that the Irish people have to make in their partitioned land. Since the Irish Republican Army (IRA) emerged during the Anglo-Irish War (1919-21), it has been bent on terminating the British government’s control of Ireland and establishing a truly independent and unified Irish Republic through armed struggles. This traumatic history, which was embedded with the conflicts and compromises of such struggles, became a pivotal issue in many Irish writings. As a consequence, it helped shape subsequent Irish literature and culture when the dream of a free and unified Ireland was constantly recalled and reconfigured. These painful markings are reflected in complex ways in Edna O’Brien’s fiction House of Splendid Isolation (1994), in which an IRA fugitive named McGreevy holes up and finally bonds with Josie O’Meara, an aged widow, in a dilapidated house. Apart from the political turmoil, considerable anguishes caused by love and marriage converge to entangle the protagonists’ traumas. This paper focuses on how, by shifting between the multifarious narrative perspectives, O’Brien’s House of Splendid Isolation stitches the interwoven personal, interpersonal, and national suffering together. In addition, the role women play in facilitating sympathetic understanding and reconciliation amid the violence and traumas in contemporary Ireland is discussed. The findings imply that, despite the age-old traumatic experiences caused by political conflicts in Ireland in the past few centuries, a trauma-free tomorrow via love and reconciliation, mostly with the help of women, is possible in contemporary Ireland.
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