Open AccessReconfiguring the West in Neil Jordan's short story "Love"
Author(s) -
Stipe Grgas
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
acta neophilologica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2350-417X
pISSN - 0567-784X
DOI - 10.4312/an.37.1-2.95-102
Subject(s) - irish , conceptualization , reading (process) , identity (music) , representation (politics) , history , space (punctuation) , close reading , gender studies , sociology , literature , linguistics , politics , art , aesthetics , law , philosophy , political science
In introducing his article, the author draws attention to the enormous importance space, especially the west of Ireland, has in the Irish culture and in the legitimization of Irish identity. The central part of the article is devoted to an analysis of Neil Jordan's "A Love" in which the author describes the way Jordan uses the West as the privileged place of Irish self-representation. A close reading of the text shows the writer's strategies which subvert the conventional image of the West of Ireland and the author voices the opinion that Jordan's text refers to the end of one conceptualization of Irish identity. Offering the concept of heterotopia (Foucault) in his conclusion the author opens up the possibility of reading the representation of space in Jordan's story as his inscription of those places which were elided from the utopian Irish national saga.