Abstract

Roddy Doyle (1958- ) is a contemporary Irish writer of international reputation．Born in an ordinary Irish family, Doyle attended University College Dublin where he joined the Socialist Labor Party and exercised his interest in writing by contributing to a student newspaper．After winning the 1993 Booker Prize, he resigned from a teaching job at Greendale Community School to write full-time．Doyle's first five novels—The Barrytown Trilogy (The Commitments, 1987; The Snapper, 1990; The Van, 1991), Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (1993), and The Woman Who Walked into Doors (1996)—are set in Barrytown, a fictional world based closely on the people and places of Kilbarrack, North Dublin in which he grew up．Firmly rooted in reality, those novels prioritize the present over the past with their fresh contemporary references that map Ireland's transformation into a secular, modern state．Doyle's preoccupation with contemporary everyday life and its “small politics”registers the material and ideological forces that shape Irish identity．Focusing on the recurring theme of “family”in Doyle's first five novels, this study intends to discuss how his writing intimates a newly articulated literary engagement with Irish way of life and becomes incorporated into the liberal narrative of a “new”Ireland.

Distancing themselves from the old Irish totems of Land, Nationality and Catholicism, Doyle's first five novels refuse to offer incisive comment on the Irish War of Independence and Northern Ireland violence．In response to criticism over his overt indifference to Irish politics, Doyle argues, “It's the difference between politics with a small ‘p’ or a big ‘P’ …… A book about a woman in a violent marriage is a political book．A book about two unemployed men is a political book.”Doyle's Barrytown tales engage with Ireland's persistent gender and class inequalities since the State's foundation．His representation of suburban family life as lived by the Rabbittes, the Clarkes and the Spencers investigates material and ideological forces as they operate in modern Ireland, and especially as they “interpellate”individual men and women into subjects．Moreover, his invention of “Barrytown families”foregrounds the suburban domestic space as a pronounced class signifier, arguably satirizing the geopolitics of the rural/urban split and the myth of the “Celtic Ireland”conjured up and commodified for popular consumption in tourism and the dream-world of Riverdance．This politics with a small “p”, lurking in such family issues as abortion, divorce and domestic violence but not lying dormant, exposes the hidden underbelly of the Celtic tiger, and articulates the experiences and aspirations of the weak and the marginalized.

Doyle's “Barrytown families”has its literary resonances．Family has been a dominant theme in Irish literature that poignantly produces “ineffectual fathers”, “industrious mothers”and “rebellious sons”．According to Declan Kiberd, “the pressure and intensity of family life in such a setting is due to the fact that the family is the one social institution with which the [colonized] people can fully identify”．As the smallest unit of society and an Ideological State Apparatus, the family plays a primary and lasting role in reproducing the practices of ideological subjection．Though the subject matter of Doyle's first five novels centers around the family, an apolitical theme on its appearance, the novels are indistinguishable from much Irish writing as they explore “the sense of belonging”, an “ideologeme”as Jameson terms it．The aesthetic and ideological values implicit in “the sense of belonging”are part of Doyle's larger set of beliefs and values which address the dialectic between individual and community, margin and center, authenticity and diversity, as well as the local and the global．His representation of the lives and conditions of the citizens excluded from the privileges of a given society, alluding to the religious and political conservatism of Irish nationalism and the commodity fetishism of consumerist capitalism, is inevitably bound up with the political beliefs and ideological values of its time, charts changes in what it might mean to be Irish, and merits a cultural critique as this study tries to present.

Ireland's modernization and secularization is accompanied by the booming of intellectual participation in public affairs．Following Joyce, some writers feel committed to re-writing “a chapter of the moral history of [their] country”．Their ability to intervene in reality and even to exert influence on policy making is, as attested by Doyle's case, largely enhanced by their literary fame at home and abroad．Doyle's writing is inevitably implicated in its social and historical subtext．Its artistic value still awaits the test of time．Yet the mainstream acceptance of his consistent concern on private life in relation to the public national project affirms his self-appointed role as a “politically engaged and socially committed”writer.