Nourishing the New Nation: How Food and Foodways in Novels about the Period of Independence Refract the State of the Nation in Uncertain Times

Description

A little over 100 years ago, the modern Irish state emerged in and into a period of uncertainty. Born out of revolutionary struggle and civil war, with a legacy of colonial rule and nationalist cultural revival, the modern nation had to find and define itself. A growing body of scholarship into Irish food history and food culture is showing how attention to food and foodways is a multifaceted tool for uncovering new aspects of Irish culture and society. Gastrocriticism is an innovative approach to reading imaginative text with a perspective informed by food scholarship. I will use such a gastrocritical lens to investigate the Irish literary imagination as it refracted the changing times and uncertainties of the nascent modern Irish state. Looking at a variety of texts such as St John Gogarty’s As I Was Going Down Sackville Street, Farrell’s Troubles, Bowen’s The Last September, Laverty’s Never No More and writings by Daniel Corkery, I will investigate how contemporary writers used food and foodways in their work to mirror their state of mind and the state of the nation, whether to mourn a loss of identity, navigate uncertain times or to embrace the changes and promises of the new Ireland.

Period	21 Jun 2024
Event title	American Conference for Irish Studies
Event type	Conference
Degree of Recognition	International