Claire Keegan

According to Ingman (2009:253), throughout the history of the Irish short story the dialogue between male and female writers has been constant. Stories by women do not necessarily reveal a different approach to the form, but a strong determination to put women's lives at the centre of their work. The purpose of this paper is to study whether there is dialogue between John McGahern's novel Amongst Women (1990) and Claire Keegan's short story " The Forester's Daughter " (2007) and, if so, to explore how Keegan takes up the ironic challenge explicit in McGahern's work concerning issues such as marriage, family relations, religion and women's lives and makes it her own.

espanolEl 1 de marzo de 2017, el anterior Primer Ministro irlandes Enda Kenny anuncio el reconocimiento oficial de la herencia, cultura e identidad unicas de los nomadas irlandeses por parte del Estado. Este hecho suscito mi interes por profundizar en algunas realidades culturales relevantes en torno a los nomadas irlandeses y su representacion (y malinterpretacion) en la literatura y el documental filmico, asi como sus efectos. Este ensayo persigue un doble objetivo: en primer lugar, analizar el papel que desarrolla la innovacion formal en las representaciones de las mujeres nomadas irlandesas en algunos ejemplos de la ficcion irlandesa contemporanea, y sus consecuencias, ya que sus autores utilizan una amplia gama de recursos formales para fusionar cuestiones de genero y las condiciones en las que viven los nomadas irlandeses. En segundo lugar, contextualizar dichas obras literarias mediante su comparacion con una seleccion de documentales protagonizados a su vez por nomadas irlan...

According to Ingman (2009:253), throughout the history of the Irish short story the dialogue between male and female writers has been constant. Stories by women do not necessarily reveal a different approach to the form, but a strong determination to put women’s lives at the centre of their work. The purpose of this paper is to study whether there is dialogue between John McGahern’s novel Amongst Women (1990) and Claire Keegan’s short story “The Forester’s Daughter” (2007) and, if so, to explore how Keegan takes up the ironic challenge explicit in McGahem’s work concerning issues such as marriage, family relations, religion and women’s lives and makes it her own.

On 1 March 2017, former Taoiseach Enda Kenny announced formal recognition of Irish Travellers' unique heritage, culture and identity by the state. This fact triggered my interest in exploring the important cultural questions surrounding Irish travellers and investigating their (mis)representation in the fields of literature and film documentary, and its effects. The aim of this essay is double: first, to focus on the role of formal innovation in representations of Irish Traveller women in examples of contemporary Irish fiction, and its consequences, because their authors use a wide range of formal devices to merge the issues of gender and Irish Travellers' lives and conditions; second, to contextualize their work by comparison with a selection of documentary films featuring Irish Traveller women. The essay will facilitate some reflections on the complexities of their representation in literature and on screen. EXPERIMENTACIÓN FORMAL COMO COMPROMISO SOCIAL: REPRESENTACIONES DE LAS MUJERES NÓMADAS IRLANDESAS EN LA LITER ATUR A Y EL CINE Resumen El 1 de marzo de 2017, el anterior Primer Ministro irlandés Enda Kenny anunció el re-conocimiento oficial de la herencia, cultura e identidad únicas de los nómadas irlandeses por parte del Estado. Este hecho suscitó mi interés por profundizar en algunas realidades culturales relevantes en torno a los nómadas irlandeses y su representación (y malinterpre-tación) en la literatura y el documental fílmico, así como sus efectos. Este ensayo persigue un doble objetivo: en primer lugar, analizar el papel que desarrolla la innovación formal en las representaciones de las mujeres nómadas irlandesas en algunos ejemplos de la ficción irlandesa contemporánea, y sus consecuencias, ya que sus autores utilizan una amplia gama de recursos formales para fusionar cuestiones de género y las condiciones en las que viven los nómadas irlanseses. En segundo lugar, contextualizar dichas obras literarias mediante su comparación con una selección de documentales protagonizados a su vez por nómadas irlandesas. El ensayo propone varias reflexiones acerca de las complejidades de su represen-tación en la literatura y en la gran pantalla. Palabras clave: innovación formal, ética, nómadas irlandeses, género, literatura irlandesa, teatro irlandés, documental fílmico.

Through institutional and public forms of environmental literacy, the literary focused practice of ecocriticism could be considered both a critical and pedagogical tool for educating people about reducing environmental degradation, while at the same time promoting sustainable practices for future societies. Scholars, artists, educators, and activists in environmental studies have turned to the concept of place as a critical framework, following a longer tradition in geographical theory and practice, to bring human communities back to responsible and sustainable relationships with the environment. Understanding one’s relationship to place promotes greater ecological awareness because of our emotional and social investments to place. One way to achieve this is through place-based stories. The attention to place continues to be evident in contemporary short stories in Ireland. The contemporary short stories surveyed in this article—by Anne Enright, Claire Keegan, and Kevin Barry—locate place as the dominant subject and theme, underpinning other ecological concerns related to locally raised “slow food,” sexual justice and reproduction, and disaster narratives associated with climate change. These stories pinpoint a range of environmental tensions while they also subtly educate readers about the social repercussions associated with them.