Biography and Autobiography: Essays on Irish and Canadian History and Literature

305 Pages·1993·14.989 MB·English

by  James Noonan (editor)

BIOGRAPHY
AND
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
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BIOGRAPHY
AND
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Essays on
Irish and Canadian
History and Literature
Edited by
James Noonan
Carleton University Press
Ottawa
1993
©Carleton University Press Inc. 1993
Printed and bound in Canada
Carleton General List 24
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
Biography and autobiography: essays on Irish and Cana
dian history and literature
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-88629-208-5 (casebound)
ISBN 0-88629-209-3 (paperback)
1. Ireland-Biography-History and criticism-Congresses. 2. Biog
raphy as a literary form-Congresses. 3. Authors, Irish-Biography
History and criticism-Congresses. 4. Irish-Canada-History-Con
gresses. I. Noonan, James. II. Canadian Association for Irish
Studies. Conference (1991 : Carleton University).
CT21.B461993 809'.93592'00417 C93-090430-3
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Acknowledgements
Carleton University Press gratefully acknowledges the support ex
tended to its publishing programme by the Canada Council and the
Ontario Arts Council.
The Press would also like to thank the Department of Communi
cations, Government of Canada, and the Government of Ontario
through the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Recreation, for their
assistance.
Table of Contents
Introduction
James Noonan (Carleton University) ....................... 1
I
APPROACHES TO BIOGRAPHY
Biography and Theory, or, Beckett in the Bath
Ira B. Nadel (Department of English,
University of British Columbia) . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
The Nature of Irish Political Biography
Paul Bew (Department of Politics,
Queen's University, Belfast) ............................... 19
A Thematic Biography of Edmund Burke
Conor Cruise O'Brien (Pro-Chancellor,
Dublin University) ........................................ 27
Religion and Reticence:
Paul Cardinal Cullen and the Problem of
Religious Biography in Ireland
Desmond Bowen (Research Professor,
Carleton University) ...................................... 37
Writing Women into Irish History:
The Biography of Fanny and Anna Parnell
Jane Mclaughlin Cote (Ottawa) ............................ 61
Excavating Nora
Brenda Maddox (London, England)......................... 71
Bio as it Auto be:
from the Letters of George Bernard Shaw
S. Finn Gallagher (Department of English,
Trent University) ......................................... 87
Memories into Images in Modern Irish Painting
James White (Director,
National Gallery of Ireland, 1964-80).. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
II
APPROACHES TO AUTOBIOGRAPHY
On the Nature of Autobiography
James Olney (Department of English,
Louisiana State University) ................................ 109
Writing an Autobiography
Garret FitzGerald (Former Taoiseach, Republic of Ireland) ... 123
Deformation of History in Blaskett Autobiographies
CathalO Hainle (Trinity College, Dublin) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 133
Reading the Book of Himself:
The Confessional Imagination of St. Augustine and Joyce
Dominic Manganiello (Department of English,
University of Ottawa) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 149
'No-man's-land':
Beckett's Bilingualism as Autobiography
Ann Beer (Faculty of Education,
McGill University) ........................................ 163
The Circularity of the Autobiographical Form:
A Study of Seamus Heaney's 'Station Island'
Laura O'Connor
(Columbia University). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 179
Sean O'Casey:
The Ufe in the Letters
Ronald Ayling (Department of English,
University of Alberta) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 187
III
STORIES OF THE IRISH IN CANADA
'The Follies of One and Twenty':
D' Arcy McGee and Young Ireland: 1842-49
Robin B. Burns (Department of History,
Bishop's University). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 205
Ogle Gowan:
Aspiring Statesman and Stage Irishman
Hereward Senior (Department of History,
McGill University) ........................................ 215
Isaac Weld and the Continuity of Canadian Poetry
D.M.R. Bentley (Department of English,
University of Western Ontario) ............................. 223
Theory and Fiction:
The Author Comments on At Face Value:
The Ufe and Times of Eliza McCormack/John White
Don Akenson (Department of History,
Queen's University, Kingston) ............................. 237
Dressing Up History:
A Critic Comments on Don Akenson's At Face Value: The
Ufe and Times of Eliza McCormack/John White
Roger Martin (Assistant Editor,
McGill-Queen's University Press) .......................... 241
'They are treating us like mad dogs':
A Donnelly Biographer's Problem
James Reaney (Professor Emeritus,
University of Western Ontario) ............................. 247
A Donnelly Biographer Creates:
A selection of four poems and an excerpt from the puppet
play Sleigh without Bells, with introductory note by James
Noonan
James Reaney. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 253
Between the tines:
Biography, Drama and N. F. Davin
Ken Mitchell (Department of English,
University of Regina) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 263
Tracking Down the Irish 'Entertainers' in the Ottawa Valley
Joan Finnigan (Hartington, Ontario) ........................ 273
Notes on Contributors
287
Introduction
James Noonan
Biography and autobiography have always held an attraction for
readers, whether they be readers of history or of literature. Even
when there has been disagreement over the value of biography
and autobiography to the study of both disciplines, ordinary read
ers have found the makers of history and literature endlessly in
teresting. And while the critical emphasis on the importance of
these genres has fluctuated in recent times, publishers have contin
ued to embrace works on Parnell, Burke, Coleridge, Shaw, Beckett,
Lady Gregory, Maud Gonne, Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Bowen, Ten
nessee Williams, Sylvia Plath, Irving Layton, E.J. Pratt, and many
others; they have welcomed works by authors on themselves, for
example, Yeats, Gogarty, Sean O'Casey, Morley Callaghan, John
Glassco, Gabrielle Roy, Thomas Merton, George Woodcock, and
Garret fitzGerald; and they have published whatever letters they
could get their hands on by all of these. Memoirs of living politi
cians rank among the best sellers at any time.
The impulse behind the thirst for these books seems to be that
we are getting close to the real truth of a person, whether written by
that person or another, and that this is a closer connection with the
mind and heart of the person than whatever he or she has written
in another genre. The desire behind the impulse is that of knowing
how other-usually famous-people have conducted their lives,
and the readiness to learn from these lives how ordinary mortals
might think or conduct their own.
The recent publication, or imminent publication, of biographies
and autobiographies on and by Irish figures made this topic an ap
pealing theme for the 1991 Conference of the Canadian Association
for Irish Studies. There were, to name a few, books by Conor Cruise
O'Brien on Edmund Burke, Brenda Maddox on Nora Joyce, Deirdre
Bair on Samuel Beckett, Roy Foster on W.B. Yeats, Denis Donoghue
on Yeats' memoirs, Ann Saddlemyer on George Yeats, Michael Hol
royd's three volumes on Shaw, the continuing popularity of Peig
Sayers and of writers of other island memoirs, Paul Bew on Parnell,