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Chapter 6 - Inside History

Storyteller Éamon a Búrc and the ‘Little Famine’ of 1879–1880

from Part I - Parnell’s Ireland and Its Different Temporalities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 December 2020

Joep Leerssen
Affiliation:
Universiteit van Amsterdam
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Summary

In 1936, Walter Benjamin, in exile from Hitler’s Germany, began his essay ‘The Storyteller’ with the apparently incontrovertible statement that ‘the storyteller in his living immediacy is by no means a present force’. As he wrote, Irish-language storyteller Éamon a Búrc, of Carna, Connemara, previously a migrant to Minnesota, was sixty, and at the height of his powers. Búrc was deeply and creatively engaged with the events of his own time and Parnell’s. This chapter considers his accounts of the Land War in County Galway and the ‘Little Famine’ of 1879–1880 to show that far from living outside history, he was a vital ‘present force’ for his marginalized community. It argues that the copious materials of the National Folklore Collection at UCD , Dublin, including transcriptions of almost 200 stories and other items by Búrc, may profitably be read ‘aslant’ for questions of mentalité in Ireland, especially in the interwar period.

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Parnell and his Times , pp. 113 - 122
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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  • Inside History
  • Edited by Joep Leerssen, Universiteit van Amsterdam
  • Book: Parnell and his Times
  • Online publication: 03 December 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108861786.008
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  • Inside History
  • Edited by Joep Leerssen, Universiteit van Amsterdam
  • Book: Parnell and his Times
  • Online publication: 03 December 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108861786.008
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Inside History
  • Edited by Joep Leerssen, Universiteit van Amsterdam
  • Book: Parnell and his Times
  • Online publication: 03 December 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108861786.008
Available formats
×