Apocryphal and Literary Influences on Galway Diasporic History
Author: Gay Lynch
Date Of Publication: Dec 2010
Isbn13: 978-1-4438-2560-3
Isbn: 1-4438-2560-3
Apocryphal and Literary Influences on Galway Diasporic History establishes that apocryphal stories, in all their transformations, contribute to collective memory. Common characteristics frame their analysis: irreducible and enduring elements, often embedded in archetypal drama; lack of historical verification; establishment in collective memory; revivals after periods of dormancy; subjection to political and economic manipulation; implicit speculation; and literary transformations.

This book contextualises Unsettled, an Australian novel about a convict play, derived from the Irish apocryphal story of The Magistrate of Galway, and documents previously unpublished primary material, including apocryphal stories passed through generations of descendents of settlers, Martin and Maria Lynch, and The Hibernian Father, a play by Irish convict, Edward Geoghegan.

It puts forward new hypotheses: that the Irish hero Cuchulain may have provided a template for the archetypal and apocryphal story of the Magistrate of Galway; that disgraced Trinity College medical student and aspiring writer, Edward Geoghegan, enacted and recounted the same father-son archetypal conflict when he was transported to Botany Bay in 1839, and wrote the The Hibernian Father based on the Magistrate of Galway; that working-class Irish families were marginalised in South-east South Australian historical records; that oral apocryphal Lynch stories may be true; that Kate Grenville’s The Secret River (2006) offers an alternative history of the Hawkesbury River settlement, by some definitions apocryphal. The mystery of Geoghegan’s disappearance is solved, and knowledge about his life increased. French theorist Gerard Genette’s notion, advanced in Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree (1997), of all novels being transtextual, provides a model for the analysis of relationships between these key apocryphal texts.

Gay Lynch teaches at Flinders University in South Australia. She has published fiction for adults and children, including Cleanskin (2006), an adult novel. Agents and publishers are presently reading Unsettled, her Irish-settler novel. Her research interests lie with mid-nineteenth-century Australian literary and colonial history, Irish Diaspora Studies, and contemporary historical fiction.

Published academic papers on creative writing praxis can be read at www.textjournal.com.au.

“Dr Lynch structures her separate arguments to evoke parallels, echoes and resonances amongst the different research strands, the whole coming together as an astute exegetical study of the layering of influences that goes into building a complex creative product.”

—Nigel Krauth, Griffith University

"[This book] will be of great interest to those working in Irish theatre studies especially, as it provides an insight into a lost Irish playwright, Edward Geoghegan, and his successful play 'The Hibernian Father'. Its main focus, however, is on the role of apocryphal stories in shaping Irish-Australian texts and the insights provided are intriguing."

—Dr. Dymphna Lonergan, Flinders University, Australia.

"Apocryphal and Literary Influences on Galway Diasporic History by Dr Gay Lynch provides useful strategies for creative writers in the transformation of history and apocryphal texts into fiction."

—Jeri Kroll, Professor of English and Creative writing, Flinders University, September 2010

“Gay Lynch has competently pursued convict playwright Edward Geoghegan's Irish origins and later life in Australia. Her detailed research has not only informed her Irish-settler novel but will enlighten future scholars of The Hibernian Father, his most successful play.”

—Janette Pelosi, Senior Archivist, NSW Archives Department

Price Uk Gbp: 39.99
Price Us Usd: 59.99

Sample pdf (including Table of Contents)