The Leading eBooks Store Online
for Kindle Fire, Apple, Android, Nook, Kobo, PC, Mac, Sony Reader...
The Irish Story
Telling Tales and Making It Up in Ireland
US$ 19.99
(+ tax)
Preview (read now)
Add to my own site
Give this ebook to a friend
Add to my wishlist
Author's page
Publisher's page
Devices
- iPad
- PC
- e-readers with Adobe Digital Editions installed
- Mac
See the full list
Available Devices
X
This book is available for the following devices:
- iPad
- Windows
- Mac
- Sony Reader
- Cool-er Reader
- Nook
- Kobo Reader
- iRiver Story
File Formats
Download: secure PDF.
Permissions
Printing
Copy/Paste
Read Aloud
Printing
Copy/Paste
Read Aloud
more
This engaging collection of 12 essays challenges what the author calls the penchant of the Irish to use overly simplistic techniques, such as nostalgia and cliche, as a means of understanding their history. Skewering Ireland's writers, historians and its popular culture alike, Foster, a history professor at Oxford and a biographer of W.B. Yeats, takes aim at the "popularization of history...which has more to do with packaging and marketing." By emphasizing a romanticized mythology of Ireland, the writer maintains, storytellers sanitize the complexities of the Irish experience and accentuate "victimhood and tyranny." Frank McCourt and Gerry Adams are two memoirists whom Foster unflinchingly targets for their soggy and formulaic notions of Ireland. "Both...turn Irish childhoods to very particular purposes and both exemplify narratives skewed through selective 'evidence' and a manoeuvred memory." On the other hand, Foster is quick to praise writers such as Elizabeth Bowen and Hubert Butler for their idiosyncratic voices.
less