Tis the Queerest Trade We Have”

Aids, Orality, and Irish Storytelling in James McCourt’s Time Remaining

Dados Bibliográficos

ID11271852
AutoresGavin C Doyle (0000-0001-7756-4275, University of Dublin, Trinity College, autor correspondente)
Ano2019
Data de publicação2019-11-14
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoMELUS Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0163-755X • E-ISSN: 1946-3170
EditoraOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/melus/mlz050
OpenAlexW2989073365
IdiomaEN
Referências citadas20

Since the publication of his debut book, Mawrdew Czgowchwz, in 1975, American author James McCourt has penned five books of fiction, a queer social history compendium, and a belletristic memoir, as well as fictional and cultural reportages for The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Yale Review, and The Recorder, the journal of the American Irish Historical Society. As well as distinctly queer, McCourt's writing is profoundly Irish. Formed primarily on both the eastern seaboard of the United States and the western coast of Ireland in Crossmolina, County Mayo, James McCourt’s writing is discernibly marked by the literary influences, dialectal diversities, and cultural idioms that traverse the intellectual and cultural cross-currents of the green Atlantic. In focusing on McCourt’s third book of fiction, Time Remaining, published in 1993, this essay explores how the strategies of Irish storytelling already key to McCourt’s creative practice take on a sense of urgency in a time of crisis—namely, in the early years of the AIDS epidemic. In bringing together discourses of Irish storytelling, folk traditions, and oral history, this article examines the ways in which McCourt complexly layers Irishness and queerness in the tapestry of his crafted creative aesthetic.

Art · Art history · Irish · Literature · Memoir · Narrative · Orality · Queer · Sociology · Storytelling · Diversity and Impact of Dance · Gender Studies · History · Spatial and Cultural Studies · Theatre and Performance Studies