Abstract
With particular reference to An tOileánach (The Islandman), Nic Craith queries the extent to which a memoir presents a “thick description” of life, in this case, on an Irish island. It was widely assumed that the peasant narrative was at once the story of an individual and of his or her presumably homogeneous community. Nic Craith explores the attempts to portray the author as the representative voice of a community rather than an individual islander with agency. The debate regarding individual or folk narrative applies widely in folklore, and in the case of Ó Criomhthain, Nic Craith also examines the censorship of his authorial voice to ensure conformity with standards of the time that prohibited any sexual nuances or unseemly behaviour.
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Nic Craith, M. (2020). Narrative and Voice. In: The Vanishing World of The Islandman. Palgrave Studies in Literary Anthropology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25775-0_3
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