What Memory Costs’

Intergenerational Inheritance of Trauma in Elizabeth Bowen’s A World of Love , William Trevor’s Fools of Fortune and Mary Leland’s The Killeen

Bibliographic Data

ID12914812
AuthorsAilbhe McDaid (0000-0002-4234-8625, University College Cork, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume14
Issue1
Pages110-126
Publication date2021-01-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of War and Culture Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1752-6272 • E-ISSN: 1752-6280
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17526272.2021.1873551
OpenAlexW3132732085
LanguageEN
References cited14

The intergenerational legacies of conflict create a context of partiality for those children who inherit the trauma of their parents. Taking the concept of the ‘hinge generation’ (Hoffman, 2004 Hoffman, E. 2004. After Such Knowledge: Memory, History and the Legacy of the Holocaust. New York: Public Affairs. [Google Scholar]) and postmemory (Hirsch, 2008 Hirsch, M. 2008. The Generation of Postmemory. Poetics Today, 29(1):103–128.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), this article examines how mid-century Irish fiction navigates the inheritance of the volatile period of the First World War, the War of Independence and the Civil War. Considering the ways in which memory theory and literary strategy are deployed to reflect the social, political and individual consequences of conflict, this article argues that Elizabeth Bowen’s A World of Love, William Trevor’s Fools of Fortune and Mary Leland’s The Killeen illustrate the long reach of the past across twentieth-century Irish society

Art · Art history · Inheritance (genetic algorithm · Psychoanalysis · History · Irish and British Studies · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Psychology · Short Stories in Global Literature

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