Modern Irish Literature - Grattan Freyer (essay date 1983)

Grattan Freyer (essay date 1983)

SOURCE: “Change Naturally: The Fiction of O'Flaherty, O'Faolain, McGahern,” in Eire-Ireland, Vol. XVIII, No. 1, 1983, pp. 138-44.

[In the following essay, Freyer examines the fiction of Liam O'Flaherty, Sean O'Faolain, and John McGahern.]

The English upper classes have an irritatingly patronizing way of saying: “Of course, you Irish are always rebels.” But, if one looks at Irish fiction this century and compares it with other European literatures, one has to concede this is in a measure true. Whereas novels of the Resistance in France, or those of the “angry young men” in Britain were only passing phases in the literature of those countries, the novel of the lonely individual pitted against and usually defeated by the society around him has been one staple ingredient of Irish fiction. The prototype is, of course, Joyce's Portrait of the Artist. Stephen Dedalus's motivation is primarily...

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