Star of the Sea as Historiographic Metafiction - Essay Example

? Star of the Sea as Historiographic Metafiction School What do you understand by ‘historiographic metafiction’? Discuss Star of the Sea with regard to this concept. Overview of the Great Famine of Ireland 1847 was one of the most dreadful years in the history of Ireland as the country got hit by a potato famine. “[A]s potato blight rotted crops and hundreds of thousands died of starvation and its attendant diseases, thousands more left their homeland forever, travelling on dubious, terrifying vessels like the fictional one after which this novel is named” (Thomson, 2012). The Great Famine in Ireland caused over 1 million deaths and emigration of a population of 2.5 million people, thus qualifying as one of the most disastrous famines known in the history of modern Europe. “The winter of 1846 to 1847 was unusually cold, and bad weather exacerbated the famine’s effects by making it dif?cult or impossible to work outdoors, the major form of government relief” (Encyclopedia of Labor History Worldwide, n.d., p. 136). Although the Irish potato famine caused irreparable loss to the helpless Irish labor, yet it contributed to the wage-labor force in many English-speaking countries around the world. Irish refugees affected by famine made part of the workforce in England, Australia, and America. Although the potato famine in Ireland was one of the worst of its kinds, yet the consequences could have been avoided with proper management of the country’s resources. Particularly, the UK’s food resources were more than sufficient to help relieve famine in Ireland. The Great Famine forms a typical milieu for the narratives that attempt to de-essentialize the perceptions of Irishness since the Great Famine was such a time in the history of Ireland which dispossessed the whole Irish nation through dispersion. Literature that defines the Irish nation as isolated agrarians tends to overlook the significance of ambiguity in the national identity. Introduction to Historiographic Metafiction The term “historiographic metafiction” was coined by Linda Hutcheon who is a literary theorist. Hutcheon has defined historiographic metafiction as novels that have gained a lot of popularity and attention and contain the traits of being extremely self-reflexive and claiming to the personages of historical significance. Historiographic metafiction is a type of postmodern novel that annuls the reflection of contemporary norms and beliefs upon the past and emphasizes upon the particularity of the event that has occurred in the past. Historiographic metafiction proposes a difference between facts and events which many historians share. Owing to the fact that the documents serve as the symbols of events that are transmuted by the historians into facts, the lesson that can be drawn from this is that the history once existed, though the human knowledge about the past is transmitted semiotically. Historiographic metafiction frequently refers to the fact with the help of paratextual conventions of historiography in order to carve as well as challenge the power of historical texts and sources (Hutcheon, 1988, p. 122-123). Historiographic metafiction heavily relies on numerous elements including historical reconceptualization, parody, and textual form of play, and is a strictly postmodern form of art. Novels and textual plays that can be included in the category of historiographic metafiction include but are not limited to In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje, Midnight’s Childern by Salman Rushdie, and Star of the Sea by Joseph O’Connor, as each of these novels give accounts of historical events that have happened in different parts of the world. Star of the Sea as Historiographic Metafiction Star of the Sea by Joseph O’Connor is an Irish novel published in the year 2002. In Star of the Sea, the Gothic works in a way that compiles the textual concerns with identity and the events of the past in terms of transitional experiences which are familiar and strange at the same time in that they link the transcultural issues with eerie. Star of the Sea classifies as a historiographic metafiction as it represents an obviously Gothic aesthetic and gives a pseudo-historical account of the circumstances that surfaced in the 26-day Atlantic voyage of a ship in the time of Great Famine in Ireland. Passengers in the ship are occupied by the haunting memories of the famine back in Ireland. On another level, the epistolary narrative dramatizes the interlinked histories of Ireland, America, and England like a relationship that is governed by colonial exploitation, trauma, and struggle for the fundamental essentials of life. “This operates quite overtly while the central metaphor of the novel, the passage of fictional ship, demonstrates the idea symbolically so that the narrative itself can be seen as a transitionary passage and as an ‘other space’ where uncanny experiences and ghostly histories can intertwine and rewrite each other” (Beville cited in Nyman, 2011, p. 13). For one, O’Connor in Star of the Sea develops a strong relationship between the slavery in America and Great Famine in Ireland. This highlights “the transatlantic transition undergone by countless Irish of the period: from oppressed race in the Old Country to oppressing race in the New World” (Moynihan, p. 55). Star of the Sea can be trusted for its account of the Great Famine since the perspective of this novel on historiography recognizes history as uncanny. The uncanny notion of history is represented figuratively in Star of the Sea’s dark atmosphere of suspense and adventure, and the uncanny traits of the novel. The dangers prowling in the text of the novel emphasize upon the significance of destabilization of history as one of the themes of the novel. Passengers in the ship are threatened more because of their intertwined histories as compared to their social differences, that speaks of the fact that production of historical accounts often accompanies unavoidable dark results. The production of a slightly manipulated account of the Great Famine in Star of the Sea is arguable since it is a consequence of signification typically in the writing of history in which the past is considered as gone and its discussion in the present is not only a mix of familiar and strange but also haunting. “Otherness” is what defines the inexact production of narrative in the writing of history. Change that occurs over the passage of time causes a transcultural move to occur between the present and the past that makes the historical narratives transhistorical in effect. The Emotional and Psychological Trauma of the Irish Emigrants The story of Star of the Sea is based on four characters that are on a ship that is making a voyage to New York. “In this historiographic meta?ction which deals most self-consciously with events at the time of the Irish potato blight, a couple of characters (American journalist Grantley Dixon and Pius Mulvey, Irish thief and murderer) mention a few encounters with Dickens in London” (Parey, 2008, p. 193). Although each of the four characters does not know the circumstances he/she would have to face in the destination, yet the farther they go into the sea, the more obvious it becomes that they cannot break connection with the factors that caused them to move away from Ireland. According to O’Connor, it is impossible for the travelers to escape the dreadful consequences of the famine they experienced in Ireland even when they are in the interstitial Atlantic waters. Despite the fact that famine is abroad, its existence causes numerous ways in which its wide-ranging consequences affect the Irish emigrants to surface. These consequences include but are not limited to displacement, hunger, and loss of life. One can sense an obvious distinction between peasantry and aristocracy on the ship like many estates. The passengers are divided into various classes depending upon their financial status. The stench of poverty affects the landlords just as much as it affects their tenants. Right from the outset, the audiences know that somebody on this journey from Ireland to New York is killed, but the identity of the murderer or the victim is not revealed until the novel’s end. Star of the Sea presents a day-to-day account of the dangerous and adventurous winter crossing. The beauty of the plot is that the story is narrated from several view-points, that include but are not limited to the view-point of Dixon, the captain’s log, and the passengers. The story is compiled in a disorganized fashion, in which the events move back and forth in time, thus requiring the audiences to put in a lot of effort to link one event to another, and draw the conclusions. The Semi-Parodic Nature of Star of the Sea Star of the Sea is one of the best examples of the novels that depict the variety of ways in which the history is mediated and constructed by the fiction. In her book, Maeve Tynan describes the ideas captured by O’Connor in Star of the Sea from the generic conventions of the Victorian era in terms of a semi-parodic postmodern takeoff that is intended to improve the past, and quotes Linda Hutcheon in the conclusion in these words, “[The novel] both inscribe[s] and undermine[s] the authority and objectivity of historical sources and explanations” (Hutcheon cited in Tynan, 2009, p. 89). Star of the Sea cannot be considered as a parody of the Victorian novel form in its entirety, yet there are certain elements that lend a parodic touch to the characters and their individualistic problems but at the same time, the novel preserves the fundamental norms and values of the Victorian era. For example, the characters of Mulvey and Mary show two nearly opposite aspects of the suffering caused by the Great Famine in Ireland. While the ramblings of Mulvey escort him to crime and drunkenness, Mary plays the role of a noble victim who makes every possible effort to uphold the values of her society. Colonialism in the Post-Colonial Literature It is a matter of extreme importance to explore the issue of scientific discourses for the postcolonial literatures which discuss famine in terms of colonialism’s function. A prime concern for such novels which indulge in the ecological analysis is the way conflicting discourses depict alternative worldviews regarding culture and nature as well as the way culture and nature are shaped by the colonial discourses. The novel Star of the Sea exemplifies a world wherein colonialism takes the form of a medium for the plans of a lab state. Such novels use development like experimentation directed at increasing the pace of modernization of the world. In other words, “O’Connor… show[s] how development’s ruse of benevolence is a means of establishing a monocultural civil society through what Visvanathan calls vivisection and social triage” (Conley, 2010, p. 4). Non-Fictional Elements in Star of the Sea Star of the Sea compiles a range of fictional modes that contain several non-fictional elements. In this novel, form adopts an overtly suggestive way to mirror the content. It speaks of the transcultural concerns of O’Connor that are accurately depicted in a textual formulation that shows an abstract poetic incantation in the shape of a ship. “Spectrality, as a theoretical lens, heightens our awareness of re-emergent cultural factors…that originally led to the Irish artist’s dual aesthetic and political identity during the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries” (Schultz, 2012, p. 13 and 14). Star of the Sea consists of writing that encapsulates a lot of strength with respect to its depiction of poverty. Not many fiction novels are as powerful. At numerous points in the story, the audiences need strong nerves to digest the facts since the interface between fiction and fact completely disappears sometimes, which can in part be attributed to the seriousness of the subject matter, and also because of the use of excerpts and cartoons from the texts belonging to the 19th century by O’Connor, that speak of the discrimination of the English for the Irish people. The same sense of racism reflects in the fact that the failure of England to do the needful to eradicate the famine from Ireland played a pivotal role in making the famine severe. “British governments had made relatively little effort to integrate Ireland economically or socially into the realm” (Encyclopedia of Labor History Worldwide, n.d., p. 137). Star of the Sea: A Multivalent Novel For many reasons, Star of the Sea can be considered as a multivalent novel since its form reflects a variety of the genres of writing which reflect different aspects of the Great Famine. Although the author of the novel is Joseph O’Connor, yet the composition of its plot is done by Grantley Dixon. Portions of the novel that are written in the form of a journal provide evidence for a verifiable truth about the political responses and the communal experiences related to the Great Famine whereas portions that have been written in the form of personal letters among the characters of the novel depict their individualistic experiences of the consequences of famine. Similarly, on one hand, passages which are court records project the taste of official narrative regarding the murder while on the other hand, an abstract poem shown as a ship places emphasis upon the plea of the characters to pray for them as, “Ora pro nobis” (O’Connor, 2002, p. 265). The form of the novel makes Star of the Sea multivalent but the stories captured by the novel highlight a constellation of experiences, thus making the novel a tragedy and a romance simultaneously. Ecocriticism in Star of the Sea Ecocriticism is an interdisciplinary approach towards the study of environment and literature wherein the environment is collectively analyzed through several sciences. Ecocriticism in Star of the Sea reflects in terms of the depiction of sociological issues concerning the characters of the novel, the decline of their economic strength as a nation as a consequence of the Great Famine, and the problems that arose as a result of that. Such unfortunate natural events have a devastating effect on the life of people both that are the immediate victims of these events and their generations. These events have a traumatic effect on the life of the sufferers. O’Connor in Star of the Sea is “’historicizing fiction and fictionalizing history’, and in so doing, [he projects] the preoccupations of contemporary Western culture at large” (Starchan and Younger, 2010, p. 192). Alongside, it was particularly writing of the Irish history that O’Connor problematized, partly setting an impression upon the audiences that writing about the history of Ireland can partly be attributed to the way the present unfolds. References Conley, E. B. (2010). Famine as a function of empire in Arrow of God and Star of the Sea. Retrieved from http://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/dspace/bitstream/1808/6974/1/Conley_ku_0099M_10972_DATA_1.pdf. Encyclopedia of Labor History Worldwide. (n.d.). Potato Famine: Ireland 1845–1851. Retrieved from http://www.gale.cengage.com/pdf/samples/sp625429.pdf. Hutcheon, L. (1988). A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. New York. Moynihan, S. (2008). ’Ships in Motion’: Crossing the Black and Green Atlantics in Joseph O’Connor’s Star of the Sea. Symbiosis: A Journal of Anglo-American Literary Relations. 12(1): 41-58. Nyman, J. (2011, Jan). Words and Worlds: Transculturalism, Translation, Identity. Retrieved from http://www.uib.no/filearchive/book-of-abstracts-120802011.pdf. O’Connor, J. (2002). Star of the Sea. New York: Harcourt. Parey, A. (2008). When Charles Dickens Enters The House Of Fiction: Peter Carey’s Jack Maggs And Joseph O’connor’s Star Of The Sea. Retrieved from http://www.ual.es/odisea/Odisea09_Parey.pdf. Schultz, M. (2012). Narratives of Dispossession: The Persistence of Famine in Postcolonial Ireland. Postcolonial Text. 7(2): 1-19. Starchan, J., and Younger, A. O. (2010). Ireland: Revolution and Evolution. Germany: Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers. Thomson, M. (2012, Aug. 18). Joseph O'Connor: Star of the Sea. Retrieved from http://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=3097748. Tynan, M. (2009). “’Everything is in the Way the Material is Composed’: Joseph O’Connor’s Star of the Sea as Historiographic Metafiction.” Eds. Maria Belville, Marita Ryan and M. Tynan. Passages: Movements and Moments in Text and Theory. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, pp. 79-95. Print. Read More