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Border States in the Work of Tom Mac Intyre: A Paleo-Postmodern Perspective
by Catriona Ryan

Date Of Publication: Mar 2012
Isbn13: 978-1-4438-3626-5
Isbn: 1-4438-3626-5

This work analyses the prose and drama of the Irish writer Tom Mac Intyre and the concept of paleo-postmodernism. It examines how Mac Intyre balances traditional themes with experimentation, which in the Irish literary canon is unusual. This dissertation argues that Mac Intyre's position in the Irish literary canon is an idiosyncratic one in that he combines two contrary aspects of Irish literature: between what Beckett terms as the Yeatsian 'antiquarians' who valorize the 'Victorian Gael' and the 'others' whose aesthetic involves a European-influenced 'breakdown of the object' which is associated with Beckett. Mac Intyre's experimentation involves a breakdown of the object in order to uncover an unconscious Irish mythological and linguistic space in language. His approach to language experimentation is Yeatsian and this is what I term as paleo-postmodern. Thus the project considers how Mac Intyre incorporates Yeatsian revivalism with postmodern deconstruction in his drama and short stories.

Dr Catriona Ryan is a post-doctoral research associate at Swansea University. She undertook her MPhil at the National University of Ireland, Cork and has recently completed her PhD at Swansea University. She has published an essay on the work of Tom Mac Intyre in Strays from the Ether: The Theatre of Tom Mac Intyre edited by Bernadette Sweeney and Marie Kelly (Carysfort Press: Dublin, 2010).