scholarly journals Double Readings and Double Rewritings. Alternative Texts in Mary O'Donnell's Remake of Mary Lavin's "The Widow's Son"

ABEI Journal ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanna Tallone
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Urban Setting ◽  
Background Information ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Narrative Authority ◽  
Significant Figure ◽  
Irish Women ◽  
Suburban Life ◽  
Narrative Voices

Mary O’Donnell’s short story “The Story of Maria’s Son”, from her collection Storm over Belfast (2008), consciously and openly rewrites Mary Lavin’s story “The Widow’s Son” in the urban setting of contemporary Ireland. O’Donnell follows the steps of a significant figure among Irish women writers and plays with the plot of her source text in a process of expansion, providing background information to weave a realistic pattern of suburban life. However, O’Donnell also engages with the structure, tone and narrative modes of the Lavin original and reproduces the pattern of Lavin’s story in her deliberate use of a double ending, or of alternative endings, thus questioning narrative authority. The purpose of this paper is to analyse Mary O’Donnell’s “The Story of Maria’s Son”, vis-à-vis Lavin’s “The Widow’s Son”, shedding light on the way both texts elaborate conflicting endings and taking into account the variety of narrative voices in both stories. If on the level of plot the tragedy of the loss of the son is generated by a mother-son conflict, on the level of discourse and structure O’Donnell develops the conflicting double endings into a postmodern reflection on the construction of texts.Keywords: rereading; rewriting; alternative ending; Mary O’Donnell; Mary Lavin.

scholarly journals Significance of Short Story Cycle in Rachel Joyce’s A Snow Garden and Other Stories: An Analytical Study Using Complexity Theory

2022 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Complex Systems ◽  
Complexity Theory ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Urban Setting ◽  
Centralized Control ◽  
Short Story Cycle ◽  
Short Story Collection ◽  
Evolving Networks ◽  
Story Cycle ◽  
Narrative Techniques

Rachel Joyce’s short story collection A Snow Garden and Other Stories (2015) is composed of seven stories which occur during a fortnight of the holiday, Christmas season. The collection uses narrative techniques which make it a unique set of stories. The stories have an urban setting and examine the intricacies of human relationships. The sense of interconnection highlighted by Joyce in the stories elevates it to a short story cycle. A short story cycle consists of individual stories which can stand on their own as complete narratives while also maintaining fictional links running through all the stories. The paper is an attempt to establish A Snow Garden and Other Stories as a short story cycle. It also argues that by narrating the interconnected nature of human lives Joyce’s work is exploring life as a complex system. As a scientific philosophy complexity theory explores the behavior of complex systems including human societies. Complex systems are self-organizing, dynamic, evolving networks that operate without any centralized control, similar to human societies. This paper will apply the principles of complex systems to reveal patterns of human behavior represented in Joyce’s work.

An Office of Her Own? Alice Munro and the Legacy of Writing with In-Authority

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Mendez
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Women's Writing ◽  
Alice Munro ◽  
Rhetorical Strategy ◽  
Shared Interest ◽  
Room Of One's Own ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Women’S Writing

In Alice Munro’s short story “The Office,” the protagonist claims an office of her own in which to write. Munro’s narrative can thus be read as engaging with the ideas on the spatial conditions for women’s writing which Virginia Woolf famously explored in A Room of One’s Own. My paper takes this thematic connection as a point of departure for suggesting that a Woolfian legacy shapes Munro’s “The Office” in ways which go beyond a shared interest in spaces for women’s writing. Both A Room of One’s Own and “The Office,” this paper argues, use the discussion of women’s writing spaces as a launching pad for exploring in how far women writers may claim for themselves traditionally masculine positions of authorship and authority, and in what ways authoritative forms of literary discourse may be transformed by women’s writing. In both A Room of One’s Own and “The Office,” the interruption as element of plot and rhetorical strategy plays a central role in answering these questions.

Irish Women Writers Speak Out: Voices From the Field (review)

2003 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 152-154
Author(s):  
Sally Barr Ebest
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Irish Women
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