‘What Memory Costs’: Intergenerational Inheritance of Trauma in Elizabeth Bowen’s A World of Love, William Trevor’s Fools of Fortune and Mary Leland’s The Killeen

Abstract

The intergenerational legacies of conflict create a context of partiality for those children who inherit the trauma of their parents. Taking the concept of the ‘hinge generation’ (Hoffman, 2004) and postmemory (Hirsch, 2008), this article examines how mid-century Irish fiction navigates the inheritance of the volatile period of the First World War, the War of Independence and the Civil War. Considering the ways in which memory theory and literary strategy are deployed to reflect the social, political and individual consequences of conflict, this article argues that Elizabeth Bowen’s A World of Love, William Trevor’s Fools of Fortune and Mary Leland’s The Killeen illustrate the long reach of the past across twentieth-century Irish society.