Repository logo
  • English
  • Italiano
  • Log In
    Have you forgotten your password?
Repository logo
Repository logo
  • Archive
  • Series/Journals
  • EUT
  • Events
  • Statistics
  • English
  • Italiano
  • Log In
    Have you forgotten your password?
  1. Home
  2. EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste
  3. Periodici
  4. Prospero. Rivista di letterature e culture straniere
  5. 2001 / 8 Prospero. Rivista di culture anglo-germaniche
  6. A City of the Mind: Ciaran Carson's Belfast
 
  • Details
  • Metrics
Options

A City of the Mind: Ciaran Carson's Belfast

Bonacci, Giulio
2001
Loading...
Thumbnail Image
ISSN
1123-2684
http://hdl.handle.net/10077/7125
  • Article

Abstract
In Northern Irish contemporary literature, Belfast is the centre of sectarian violence and hatred, and is one of the most dangerous cities of the whole English-speaking world. In Ciaran Carson’s writings, Belfast has a dream-like quality: it is the shape-shifting city that has to reinvent its own geography day after day, partially because it was a war zone during the ‘Troubles’, but also because of the duplicity of the city’s nature. Belfast is a city that had to accommodate new industries and businesses, and thus continuously changed without logic into something different by encompassing everything that was wrong and rotten in the country during the Eighties. For this reason, Belfast can be represented by both the labyrinth and the map, which symbolise its continuous morphing into something different, and convey a sense of entrapment. Carson’s exploration of Belfast is defined by these antithetical concepts of metamorphosis and enclosure. The essay analyses some of Carson’s poems, focussing on the difference between Carson’s imagery and the romantic nationalist forms as well as the rural world of the Irish tradition. Carson’s concern with language is also taken into consideration, since through language and the choice of a native imagery and a technical innovation, the author overtly discredits the English dominance and dismisses English culture as central.
Series
Prospero. Rivista di Letterature Straniere, Comparatistica e Studi Culturali
VIII (2001)
Subjects
  • Belfast in literature...

  • Belfast during the 'T...

  • Irish literature

  • Irish and English cul...

  • Irish contemporary po...

Publisher
EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste
Source
Giulio Bonacci, "A City of the Mind: Ciaran Carson's Belfast ", in: Prospero. Rivista di Letterature Straniere, Comparatistica e Studi Culturali, VIII (2001), pp. 5-34
Languages
en
File(s)
Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Download
Name

Bonacci_Prospero_2001_VIII.pdf

Format

Adobe PDF

Size

6.83 MB

Indexed by

 Info

Open Access Policy

Share/Save

 Contacts

EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste

OpenstarTs

 Link

Wiki OpenAcces

Archivio Ricerca ArTS

Built with DSpace-CRIS software - Extension maintained and optimized by 4Science

  • Cookie settings
  • Privacy policy
  • End User Agreement
  • Send Feedback