Dissertation

Wakes, ceilis, and characters: Commemoration and identity in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland

Cashman, Ray Dudley

2002

Overview

This is an ethnographic study of social interaction and oral narrative in a Northern Irish border community in western County Tyrone. People in this locality have witnessed a staggering amount of cultural, political, and socioeconomic change. As members of the eldest generation die, their all-night wakes become primary sites for comparison of past and present through humorous and contemplative anecdotes about the deceased and other past locals, especially those referred to as “characters.” Likewise, during nighttime social visits (ceilis), storytelling focuses on the personalities and actions of local individuals, while gesturing toward the character of the community that is composed of such individuals. Through narrative and over time, individuals are transformed into character types—models of and for behavior—that are useful for coming to terms with being an individual within a group in the midst of change. Swapping local character anecdotes and narratives in other related genres becomes an exploration of human nature, community, local identity, and social transformation. Throughout this project, interpretation of scores of transcribed stories and strips of conversation is informed by performance studies, which challenges the division of text and context through holistic analysis of communicative events. After an introduction in the Prologue and Chapter One to the topic and the community studied, Chapters Two and Three discuss wakes and ceilis as traditional yet adaptive social events, and as sites for intimate commemoration through storytelling. Chapter Four investigates the range of local storytelling genres as a system of communication, and identifies the local character anecdote as central in this system for this speech community. Chapters Five and Six discuss the notion of character from an etic perspective that draws on literary theory and from an emic perspective that draws on recorded interviews and storytelling events. Observations about commemoration and the construction of community, collective memory, and local identity coalesce in the conclusion. Specifically, Chapter Seven recasts stories about personal character as both articulations and enactments of a local culture that challenges the final authority of external, institutional power and of often sectarian, publicly asserted forms of identity construction.

• Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• Subject: Communication / Cultural anthropology / Folklore
• ISBN: 9780493963778, 0493963774