Polyphony, Provincialism, Nostalgia and Involution in Post-Celtic Tiger Ireland: Donal Ryan’s The Spinning Heart (2012)

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper analyses the narrative and thematic structure of Donal Ryan’s debut novel, The Spinning Heart (2012), which offers a snapshot of rural Ireland after the Celtic Tiger period and questions its benefits, the modernisation of Ireland and the response of Irish people faced with critical times. It draws on three theoretical frameworks for the analysis of Ryan’s narrative structure, thematic content and style: first, a variation of Bakhtin’s concept of heteroglossia at social and stylistic levels; second, the conceptions of the parochial and the provincial in post-Celtic Tiger rural Ireland; third, the concept of nostalgia. The analysis concludes that the proliferation of voices and the use of monologues show Ryan’s need to portray disaffection and regret when a silent dialogising discourse reigns. Ryan’s novel denounces the loss of collectivity in rural communities to a more individualistic society. It proposes a parochialism that is universal albeit rooted in the local.