Childhood narratives in Contemporary Irish Novels

Abstract

The image of childhood as reflected through literature has evolved through time and places, even though it is almost intrinsic to autobiography and is essential to the genre of the Bildungsroman. Childhood narratives do not only allow writers to convey a critique of society as seen through the eyes of an naive, innocent child, or to explore the roots of their own artistic vocation. They also represent a challenge for the writer who has to invent or imitate the language of a character who is not yet in full command of words. In Ireland, one of the master childhood narratives is James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, in which Stephen Dedalus discovers language in his early childhood and later decides to become an artist working with words. This article studies four contemporary Irish childhood narratives which each in its own way exemplify the main features of the genre: Hugo Hamilton's The Speckled People, Roddy Doyle's Paddy Clarke HaHaHa, Claire Keegan's Foster and Patrick McCabe's The Butcher Boy.The interest of these four novels lies in their concern not just witht he representation of childhood but also with the recreation of a specific language associated with this period of life.