Anxiety and liminality in the autobiographical work of Hugo Hamilton

Manuela Graf

manuela.graf@doktorant.ujd.edu.pl
(Poland)

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to explore the relationship between the long-term liminal state, implied by the notion of “liminal identity” as defined by Tomasz Ferenc, and anxiety in German-Irish migration literature. Hugo Hamilton’s autobiographical works: The Speckled People: A Memory of a Half-Irish Childhood and The Sailor in the Wardrobe serve as exemplifying material. The subjective experiences of the subject juxtaposed with the accounts of his relatives are analysed in terms of the causes and consequences of his inability to cross the liminal threshold. The author concludes that the source of the anxiety appearing in Hugo Hamilton’s works is – on the one hand – a existence “in between” cultures and an inability to develop an individual cultural identity, and, on the other hand, a complicated relationship with his father who imposes on the protagonist a specific understanding of an existence in the space “in between”.


Keywords:

liminality, 'in-between' space, migration literature, multiculturality, Hugo Hamilton

References

Bartlett, Frederic C. Remembering. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1932. Google Scholar

Bourke, Eoin. „The Birthmark of Germanness: Hugo Hamilton and the Question of Belonging.” Creative Influences – German-Irish Biographies Irish German Studies 4, edited by Joachim Fischer, and Gisela Holfter, 179–193. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2009. Google Scholar

Depner, Dorothea. Germany, Ireland and the Second World War in the works of Christabel Bielenberg, Francis Stuart and Hugo Hamilton. PhD diss,. Dublin: Trinity College. School of English, 2013. Google Scholar

Ferenc, Tomasz. „Liminalność a procesy tożsamościowe artystów emigrantów.” In Tożsamość. Nowoczesność. Stereotypy, edited by Renata Dopierała, and Kaja Kaźmierska, 172–186. Kraków: Nomos 2012. Google Scholar

van Gennep, Arnold. The Rites of Passage. Second Edition. London: The University of Chicago Press, 2019. Google Scholar

van Gennep, Arnold. Übergangsriten (Les rites de passage), 3rd, revised edition. Translated by Klaus Schomburg, and Sylvia M. Schomburg-Scherff. Frankfurt am Main–New York: Campus Verlag, 2005. Google Scholar

Hamilton, Hugo. The Sailor in the Wardrobe. Great Britain: Fourth Estate, 2006. Google Scholar

Hamilton, Hugo. „Speaking to the walls in English.” Accessed July 10, 2023. http://www.powells.com/essays/hamilton.html. Google Scholar

Hamilton, Hugo. The Speckled People. Great Britain: Fourth Estate, 2003. Google Scholar

Jaskulska, Sylwia. „Rytuał przejścia jako kategoria analityczna. Przyczynek do dyskusji nad badaniem rytualnego oblicza rzeczywistości szkolnej.” Studia Edukacyjne, no. 26 (2013): 79–97. http://hdl.handle.net/amu-prod:uama743241d59f94a4885308d7dc504a19b. Google Scholar

Ní Éigeartaigh, Aoileann. „Homesick while at Home: Hugo Hamilton and The Speckled People.” In Exploring Transculturalism: A Biographical Approach, edited by Wolfgang Berg, and Aoileann Ní Éigeartaigh, 113–129. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag, 2009. Google Scholar

Schacter, Daniel L. and Addis, Donna Rose. „The cognitive neuroscience of constructive memory: Remembering the past and imagining the future.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B362 (2007): 773–786. http://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2007.2087. Google Scholar

Schacter, Daniel L. „Constructive memory: past and future.” Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience 14, no. 1 (2012): 7–18. https://doi.org/10.31887%2FDCNS.2012.14.1%2Fdschacter. Google Scholar

Schenk, Klaus. „Transformationen interkulturellen Erzählens. Perspektiven eines narrativen turn.“ In Turns und kein Ende? Aktuelle Tendenzen in Germanistik und Komparatistik, edited by Elke Sturm-Trigonakis, Olga Laskaridou, Evi Petropoulou, and Katerina Karakassi, 83–94. Frankfurt am Main– Bern–Wien: Peter Lang Edition, 2017. Google Scholar

Schomburg-Scherff, Sylvia M. „Nachwort.“ In Arnold van Gennep. Übergangsriten (Les rites de passage), 3rd, revised edition. Translated by Klaus Schomburg, and Sylvia M. Schomburg-Scherff, 233–256. Frankfurt am Main–New York: Campus Verlag, 2005. Google Scholar

Turner, Victor. Gry społeczne, pola i metafory. Symboliczne działanie w społeczeństwie. Translated by Wojciech Usakiewicz. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, 2005. Google Scholar

Wallace, Arminta. „First a Flight to Berlin, then a Refuge in Fiction.” The Irish Times, November 6, 1990. Google Scholar

Wallace, Arminta. „The Past Is Myself.” The Irish Times Magazine, January 11, 2003. Google Scholar

Download


Published
2023-12-29

Cited by

Graf, M. (2023). Anxiety and liminality in the autobiographical work of Hugo Hamilton. Transfer. Reception Studies, 8, 167–183. https://doi.org/10.16926/trs.2023.08.05

Authors

Manuela Graf 
manuela.graf@doktorant.ujd.edu.pl
Poland

Statistics

Abstract views: 0
PDF downloads: 0


License

Copyright (c) 2023 Transfer. Reception Studies

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.


Similar Articles

<< < 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 > >> 

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.