Staging Famine Irish Memories of Migration and National Performance in Ireland and Québec

Type of resource
Author/collaborator
Title
Staging Famine Irish Memories of Migration and National Performance in Ireland and Québec
Abstract
The author examines recent community theatre productions about the Irish Famine migration to Quebec in 1847. He explores community-based and national ideas of performance and the role of remembrance in shaping and transmitting the diasporic identities of Quebec's Irish cultural minority. While most of the plays re-enact French-Canadian adoptions of Famine orphans as spectacles of Irish integration in Québec, David Fennario's Joe Beef: (A History of Pointe Saint Charles) (1984, published 1991) rehearses the history of the Canadian/Quebec nation in terms of recurrent labor exploitation epitomized by the struggles of the Famine Irish emigrants. The author argues that Fennario's exclusion from definitions of "national performance" in Quebec shows the elision of its Anglophone national minority, one that is neglected in Quebec's negotiations of "Francophone national identity."
Publication
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
Volume
Vol. 18
Issue
no. 4
Pages
8 pages
Date
2016
URL
Citation
King, Jason. “Staging Famine Irish Memories of Migration and National Performance in Ireland and Québec.” CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture Vol. 18, no. 4 (2016): 8 pages. https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2907&context=clcweb.
Find in a library
Permalink