Adresse
Centre Culturel Irlandaiscontact
Titre : | A Second Life for A Second Life: The 1994 and 2010 Editions of Dermot Bolger’s Novel (2022) |
Auteurs : | Helen PENET, Auteur |
Type de document : | Article |
Dans : | Etudes irlandaises (Vol 47 n 2 Automne 2022) |
Article en page(s) : | p. 57-69 |
Langues: | Anglais |
Mots-clés : | |
Résumé : | This article proposes to compare the two versions of Dermot Bolger’s novel, and to show how A Second Life: A Renewed Novel (2010) reflects the changes which have taken place in Ireland between 1993 and 2010. Little was Dermot Bolger to know that over a decade after the reworked novel’s publication, the Final Report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes (2021) would still have failed to answer some of the questions raised in both his 1994 and 2010 editions of the novel. Of the changes introduced when Dermot Bolger gave a second life to the novel, some are entirely new sentences or longer passages; others are tweaks of the original giving them a slightly different twist; others are suppressions of words or whole sentences. Some simply reflect a greater sensitivity in the choice of words, such as the systematic replacement of “real mother” with “birth mother”. The changes this article aims to understand fall into three categories: a greater insistence on the situation of unmarried mothers and the shame they were made to feel; passages which aim to home in on how the country allowed the situation to endure for such a long time, and how that situation has (and has not) changed in the Ireland of 2010. Finally, a number of both subtle and more significant changes reflect an increased understanding in 2010 of the suffering for both mothers and adopted children around not knowing the truth. This desperate need to know and to have proof or evidence which will back up this knowledge takes on a particular sheen for the narrator-protagonist whose profession as photographer is tied up with the evidential role understood to be played by photography. |
Pays de publication : | France |
Fonds : | Médiathèque |