Language, Being and the Body in Eimear McBride’s A Girl is a Half-formed Thing
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18485/bells.2021.13.12Keywords:
contemporary Irish fiction, body, narrative, experimental languageAbstract
Presence and participation are key aspects in McBride’s narrative; it allows the reader to access the point where thought becomes language so that it is still closely linked to the experiencing body. It tells the story of a young girl and her troublesome teenagehood filled with abuse, loneliness and the need to heal. Even if it is through the context of a literary work, the novel seeks to be taken seriously, demanding a corporeal presence from the reader. The first part of the following paper describes how the work addresses both Celtic and Post-Celtic Tiger, modernist and postmodernist challenges while creating an innovative style of its own. The second part analyses how language operates through various narrative devices in A Girl is a Half-formed Thing, showing the connections with the body, aspects of the reading process itself and stylistic elements.
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