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Henry James

The Irish State and all that it represents conceptually, looms large within the early novelistic endeavours offered by Colm Tóibín. It has permeated, inspired and characterised not only his own creative output but the work of his literary contemporaries also. When reflecting upon the State as an entity and indeed the individual’s position within, Tóibín’s early novels appropriately grapple with the questions that arise from such a consideration. The South, for example,offers rumination upon a confliction of Irish national identity found within the protagonist, Katherine Proctor, as well as the alienating qualities inherent in a proliferation of national identity within the collective consciousness of a society.    

Additionally, Heather Blazingcan be read as a further investigation into the national identity of contemporary Ireland that moves beyond the political and instead, throws into sharp relief the “normative” cultural practices that helped delineate an early Ireland’s sense of nationhood. This is brought about throughTóibín’s choice to focalise Eamon Redmond as the figurative battleground on which the conflict of the public and private self plays out. Finally, we have The Blackwater Lightshipas a literary exploration of homosexuality within the context of Irelands shifting social landscape, providing for the first time a definitively gay Irish protagonist.

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the master explores gay theory