The lived narrative versus the learned narrative

• Main Author: MacIntyre, Linden
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: Manchester University Press 2017
• Subjects: Breton Island
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.7228/manchester/9781526100566.003.0013

John McGahern, in his fiction and memoir, follows an ancient bardic tradition exemplified in our time by the poets Seamus Heaney and Sorley MacLean. This chapter takes a more personal approach to make connections between the author’s childhood in a small place on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, and the early years of John McGahern, Seamus Heaney and Sorley MacLean, a Scottish poet. The chapter examines the author’s own formation as a journalist and novelist – a journey greatly influenced by McGahern and by the strong Irish and Scottish tradition of Breton Island - alongside that of the three writers. It explores the relationship between growing up on an island and a sense of isolation and inferiority that might go with it, and the impact that this kind of life might have had on McGahern’s, Heaney’s and MacSorley’s work and personality.