Irish Identity through the Eyes of a Child in Memoir

Abstract

This Master Thesis analyses the way in which four Irish memoirs, namely Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes, Hugo Hamilton's The Speckled People, Patrick Doherty's I Am Patrick, and Tom Phelan's We Were Rich and We Didn't Know It, portray their authors' inculcation with two major and interrelated aspects of Irish Identity, Irish Nationalism and Irish Catholicism between the 1940s and 1960s when the authors grew up in Ireland. In order to understand their narratives, theoretical background regarding various fields connected with Irish national identity and identity in general have been provided. These fields include the nature of the genre of memoir, the notions of nation and nationalism, Irish history from the perspective of nationalism and of the Catholic Church, as well as the nature of Irish Catholicism in Ireland in the period in question.