The Vanishing World of the Islandman: Narrative and Nostalgia (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9783030257743)

Exploring An t-Oile疣ach (anglicised as The Islandman), an indigenous Irish-language memoir written by Tom疽 ﾓ Criomhthain (Tom疽 O'Crohan), M疂r饌d Nic Craith charts the development of ﾓ Criomhthain as an author; the writing, illustration, and publication of the memoir in Irish; and the reaction to its portrayal of an authentic, Gaelic lifestyle in Ireland. As she probes the appeal of an island fisherman's century-old life-story to readers in several languages--considering the memoir's global reception in human, literary and artistic terms--Nic Craith uncovers the indelible marks of ﾓ Criomhthain's writing closer to home: the Blasket Island Interpretive Centre, which seeks to institutionalize the experience evoked by the memoir, and a widespread writerly habit amongst the diasporic population of the Island. Through the overlapping frames of literary analysis, archival work, interviews, and ethnographic examination, nostalgia emerges and re-emerges as a central theme, expressed in different ways by the young Irish state, by Irish-American descendants of Blasket Islanders in the US today, by anthropologists, and beyond.