While I found this piece of literature by David Lloyd to be incredibly difficult, I also found parts of it (the parts I could somewhat understand) to be incredibly interesting. Lloyd begins his critique by introducing the fact that throughout history, violence has been habitually attributed to
Before discussing Lloyd’s reasons for the inadequacy of the nineteenth century novel, I would first like to pose the idea that many if not most accounts of history involve the transmission of mainstream interpretations and values. Lloyd states on page 128, “But the issue is not merely literary, nor merely a matter of the accuracy of inaccuracy of any particular representation of Irish history, politics or culture. It concerns, rather, a problem of representation in general as a crucial element in the intersecting matrices of politics, aesthetics and historiography.” What I think Lloyd is implying here is that many accounts of history tend to be single-minded or dominant perspectives. Perhaps the “subaltern” perspective that Lloyd brings forth so often is not even considered in the accounts of the nineteenth century novel. The reading even suggests that the social instability caused many voices and narratives to be unrepresented. The accounts of Irish history that I have learned talk about the complete division and polarity between landlords and peasants. Perhaps it is stereotypical of me to assume that many of the “peasants” point of views are probably unrepresented. Just as in
The reasons for inadequacy of the nineteenth century Irish novel that Lloyd suggests include; The general instability of Irish society and violence throughout history. We learn from the reading about the Penal Laws which were a series of laws imposed under British rule that removed power from the native Roman Catholic majority. This led to the 1798 uprising.
Lloyd also includes that the absence of a strong and independent middle class, as I mentioned before the “landlords and peasants” may have also been a reason as to why the nineteenth century Irish novel is inadequate. Another important factor is the bilingual nature of Irish culture. Lloyd informs us that, “recent research suggests that a large portion of the nineteenth century was quite capable of manipulating both languages” (130). Doesn’t that blatantly tell us that the accounts of history were easily manipulated overtime? You could spend hours rehashing the slight word error or manipulation in words that caused a completely mistaken view of historical fact. For example,
I also gathered the idea that Irish tradition tended to rely on oral transmission rather than written transmission. This may sound cliché’ but the game telephone that we all played as kids also shows us that stories being passed down from generation to generation are easily manipulated or exaggerated when there is no written evidence from the 1st perspective.
Without these historical accounts, a society shares no common memory of where it has been, or what happened, or what past decisions account for present circumstances and so forth, the underlying issue that I believe Lloyd is trying to allude to is that when studying Irish tradition, we must understand that all accounts are interpretations and therefore subjective, you must consider more than one perspective and the problem with the Irish novel is that many perspectives are lacking or lost.
Nicole,
ReplyDeleteI liked how you connected the comment, “The reading even suggests that the social instability caused many voices and narratives to be unrepresented” with your comments about perspective and point of view. It’s a very good point and comparison regarding our own countries history as told by our history textbooks. I hadn’t made that comparison, but it’s so true. Once again it goes to show that history is “written” by whoever seems to be the “victor” and this gives a lop-sided rendition of the truth.
Another area that you discussed and I agree with completely was related to the importance of the oral tradition in Irish culture. In my opinion, I think this is partly why the idea of a “novel” or written tradition is limited in Irish culture. I think that this can be seen with so many cultures that have/had a much stronger oral tradition than a written tradition. For example, Native Americans and Hmong people have traditionally had a very strong oral tradition and not as strong of a written tradition. As you stated, it can indeed lead us to a be less familiar with these cultures’ history and therefore all forms of tradition need to be better understood and considered in order to fully grasp the culture. I loved the comparison to the game telephone because I think this a perfect description of what can happen with stories passed down in an oral fashion. People embellish, misinterpret and make small changes that in the end can change the whole story; but I think that is also to be considered just another part of the culture.
Nicole,
ReplyDeleteSo most of your break down I can agree with, especially the portions where you analyze that socio-political breakdown of the middle class. However I have to disagree when you say that "Without these historical accounts, a society shares no common memory of where it has been, or what happened, or what past decisions account for present circumstances and so forth". Most civilizations started out with absolutely no way to record their history and in fact managed to keep their stories completely detailed and accurate, for example the Vedic priests of Hindu tradition, who used the perfection of word to preserve both their religion and their history.
Still you made a direct and, in my opinion, especially important point when addressing how "you could spend hours rehashing the slight word error or manipulation in words that caused a completely mistaken view of historical fact." One of the problems with Gaelic, the national language of Ireland, is how there are often half a dozen words for one in english, all based around how they are used and in what manner of context. It causes no end of problems and miscommunications and I can only imagine how an outsider would do looking at a traditional Irish Gaelic writing and try to understand why things were said and what implications were made by the choice of the words. It takes the game of telephone to whole new and complex level that I don't even think David Lloyd could navigate.
WS
Hey Nicole!
ReplyDeleteThought I would hop over and take a look at what you wrote about since you took time to look at my blog. It seems that everyone’s I have looked at has come to a general consensus.
I defiantly am with you, I have always kind of associated Irish history with the idea of violence and turmoil and was very interested to see how Lloyd would connect this history to the novel and writing. He does bring forth the idea of history being written from an outside perspective (which you mentioned), history in general isn’t usually written by those who went through the events themselves and thus cannot be fully understood. I believe that this was definitely the case with Ireland; Britain looked at their situation though unknowing eyes and saw the violence as something that had no meaning or that wasn’t justifiable. I loved the fact that you related this to American textbooks because this is something that I thought of immediately when reading the article, I thought of how this mirrored our (the United States) interpretation of wars, and just history in general, it never seems to detail much outside of our own role in it.
I’m glad you did a little research I didn’t really have time to brush up on Irish history and didn’t know really what to make on the relation of Irish history to it’s literature. So you raised some good points with your explanation of the Penal Laws and their influence on nineteenth century literature.