100 research outputs found
Transcending the Text: Briony\u27s Battle for Authorship in Atonement
No full textIan McEwan\u27s Atonement presents a meta-level relationship among author, reader, and characters. Tucked between layers of language throughout the novel, the reader discovers evidence of Roland Barthes\u27s theory that an author must figuratively die in order for a reader to inject his or her own meaning into a text. However, instead of focusing on this fatal author-reader relationship, McEwan showcases a variation of this theory in which he appears to indirectly pose the question of how a literary character fits into the authorship dynamic. Extending Barthes\u27s Death of the Author, McEwan discovers that only one person-either the author or the character-can survive and assert authority over a text when a character composes a novel within a novel. This notion of conquering the author is exhibited throughout the course of Atonement when McEwan\u27s character, Briony Tallis, takes on an authorial voice of her own, and transcends the text in which she is trapped by composing her own novel on McEwan\u27s pages. Although she is a product of McEwan\u27s imagination and linguistic artistry, the aspiring thirteen-year-old writer rebels against her creator by engaging in a battle for equal authorship rights with him. Through her interactions with patriarchal language throughout the novel, Briony is able to formulate her own bold writing style-signaling McEwan\u27s defeat in the fight for authorial legitimacy, and exhibiting the rising importance of female authors in a formerly male-dominated literary canon
In Search of the "Telling Detail": Ian McEwan, Briony Tallis, and the Demands of Authorship
Get PDFMuch scholarly interest surrounding Ian McEwan's Atonement has focused on the abrupt shift that occurs in the novel's final section, "London, 1999." This essay argues that this section makes it clear that the main story of the novel is not Briony, Robbie, and Cecilia's entanglement due to Lola's teenaged rape but Briony's development as a writer, her kunstlerroman. As such, it is crucial to the novel, not simply a metafictional ploy, because it illuminates the lengths she has gone to in writing her final book and fulfilling her youthful promise. McEwan's response to a real-life plagiarism accusation reinforces his depiction of Briony as an author who searches for "the telling detail," as opposed to one who sticks to verifiable, historical accuracy
Inclusive Global Histories: Performing Collections at the Ulster Museum
No full textKnowledge-sharing on performance collections; centres community memories; nurtures transdisciplinary discovery of musical instruments.About this eventThis is an in-person only event. Please register here as spaces are limited.12:00, 26 July 2022.Venue: Inclusive Global Histories exhibition, First Floor, Ulster Museum.Curators, Dr Karen Logan and Tríona White Hamilton will discuss the Inclusive Global Histories exhibition and how the concept has been shaped by the museum decolonisation movement; and by National Museums NI's emphasis on - and long history of - contributing to inclusive futures in Northern Ireland.Their tour will focus on musical instruments on display - including a raft zither from Nigeria; an Australian baobab nut used as a ceremonial rattle; performance masks from West Africa; and a vinyl recording of the American jazz composer, Sun Ra's soundtrack to the 1972 Afrofuturist film, 'Space is the Place'.We will then move to the Learning Zone on the Museum's ground floor, where Belfast Zimbabwean musician, Agrippa Njanina, will play an mbira that he recently donated to the museum's collection. Roberta Bacic will introduce the 'Dancing Cueca Alone' arpillera, followed by a musical response by Victor Henriquez on charango. The arpillera, on loan from the Conflict Textiles collection, appears in the exhibition. Musician Yujing Peng will play and talk about the history of guzheng, how it is played and the different sounds it can produce. There will be a Q&A before close.Participants may also be interested that Roberta Bacic's 'Conflict Textiles' exhibition is currently showing in the Queen's University Belfast McClay Library; see https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/conflicttextiles/search-quilts2/fullevent1/?id=232This event is part of the Museums, Empire and Northern Irish Identity project in the Centre for Public History and Institute of Irish Studies at Queen's University Belfast in partnership with National Museums NI and has been co-organised by Dr Briony Widdis and Professor Fiona Magowan.Please note that this event will be filmed. The films will be available on the National Museums NI and Queen's University Belfast web pages after the event. Photos will also be taken
Ethnographic collections in Northern Ireland and the Solomon Islands tomako (canoe) at the Ulster Museum, 1898–2023
No full textThe World Cultures collection at National Museums Northern Ireland is an essential source for the study of Irish collecting in the wider British Empire. The 2022 redisplay of the collection in the Ulster Museum's exhibition, Inclusive Global Histories, is part of a staged engagement with local and source communities. Given the critical importance of the global museum decolonisation work of which the exhibition is an example, a fresh consideration of this ethnographic collection's history is timely. This article reviews the collection within the context of the three museums that have housed it, and investigates how curators within the institution understood, represented and displayed the collection. It does so through a case study of a war canoe (tomako), that was taken from the Solomon Islands, by John Casement, a captain in the Royal Navy, and is the largest and among the most significant items within the collection. The canoe's centrality to the gallery — built around it in 1925 — that now contains Inclusive Global Histories reveals complex social networks between nineteenth- and twentieth-century collectors, curators and photographers, and aids understanding of how global human cultures have been regarded in Northern Ireland's civic life.<br/
The Royal African Company in The National Archives (UK)
No full textIn 2023-4, as a researcher and eighteenth century specialist at The NationalArchives, I worked on the papers of the Royal African Company and itssuccessors. Established in 1663 by royal charter, the Company transported moreenslaved African people to the Americas than any other institution in the history ofthe trade. The research focused on the Detached Papers - a previously uncatalogued set of volumes in TNA’s T 70 series
Colonialism, empire, and inclusive global histories at the Ulster Museum
No full textOn 31 March 2022, National Museums NI launched Inclusive Global Histories at the Ulster Museum. Developed with the support of Michelle McIntyre-Brewer as Cultural Liaison, and through collaboration with local citizens and organisations, the exhibition indicates institutional commitment to decolonisation and to confronting contemporary racism. Focusing on the mid-late twentieth century, this article reviews the history of the ‘World Cultures’ collection that provides the basis for the exhibition
'Colonial objects'? Museum decolonisation, binaries and autoethnography in Northern Ireland
No full textThis chapter begins with an autoethnographic exploration of the Northern Irish author’s experience of inheriting family possessions from Hong Kong, Ireland and Britain. It considers whether the term ‘colonial object’ can be applied to these items and suggests that, in addition to representing a geopolitically colonised individual, group, or place, as do many of those in museums, such an item might also be one that has been used to perpetuate ideas about the ‘other’.<br/
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