Echoes of the Banshee in Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s A Ghost in the Throat
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2595-8127.v28i1p49-61Parole chiave:
A Ghost in the Throat , Doireann Ní Ghríofa, Keening, Banshee, FolkloreAbstract
Death occupies a significant place in Irish cultural anxiety. In Ireland, the expression of grief and lamentation holds an important place in mourning rituals. In this context, symbolic figures such as the supernatural death-messenger Banshee and the historic keening women embody both belief and tradition, offering essential ways to confront the pain of death. In A Ghost in the Throat (2021), by Doireann Ní Ghríofa, a new perspective on lamentation emerges, while it is still linked to the folkloric and historical traditions of Ireland. From a comparative perspective, this study examines how the folkloric belief in the banshee and the performances of the keening women resonate in Ní Ghríofa’s narrative, focusing on the role of lamentation in contexts of death. To this end, a qualitative and bibliographic approach was employed. It draws on Lysaght’s (1986) work on the supernatural folkloric Banshee, Bourke's (2002) and Ó Coileáin’s (1988) discussions of the keening tradition and the keening women, and close readings of A Ghost in the Throat (2021).
Riferimenti bibliografici
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Lysaght, Patricia. The Banshee: The Irish Supernatural Death-Messenger. The Glendale Press, 1986.
Ní Ghríofa, Doireann. A Ghost in the Throat. Tramp Press, 2021.
Obert, Julia C. “Toward Irish Joy: Affect and Resistance in Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s A Ghost in the Throat.” Contemporary Literature, vol. 64, no. 2, Summer 2023, pp. 182–203. https://doi.org/10.3368/cl.64.2.182.
Ó Coileáin, Seán. “The Irish Lament: An Oral Genre.” Studia Hibernica, no. 24, 1988, pp. 97–117. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20496221.
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