<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>Máirtín Ó Cadhain’s <italic>The Dirty Dust</italic> (1949, trans. 2015) and George Saunders’s <italic>Lincoln in the Bardo</italic> (2017) illustrate two very different uses of the literary device of conversations in a cemetery. Ó Cadhain distilled the venom of selfishness and vicious back-biting found in a small rural Irish village then refined it through comedy and satire, while Saunders created a collage of voices by employing a combination of fantastic devices together with fragments of history, newspaper articles and biography to eulogize Abraham Lincoln as grieving parent and to demonstrate that love does indeed transform the world – even the world of the dead.</p></abstract>

Máirtín Ó Cadhain’s The Dirty Dust (1949, trans. 2015) and George Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo (2017) illustrate two very different uses of the literary device of conversations in a cemetery. Ó Cadhain distilled the venom of selfishness and vicious back-biting found in a small rural Irish village then refined it through comedy and satire, while Saunders created a collage of voices by employing a combination of fantastic devices together with fragments of history, newspaper articles and biography to eulogize Abraham Lincoln as grieving parent and to demonstrate that love does indeed transform the world – even the world of the dead.

“This undiscovered country” in Máirtín Ó Cadhain’s <italic>Cré na Cille</italic> and George Saunders’s <italic>Lincoln in the Bardo</italic>

Institute of English and American Studies

Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

“This undiscovered country” in Máirtín Ó Cadhain’s  and George Saunders’s 

Máirtín Ó Cadhain’s The Dirty Dust (1949, trans. 2015) and George Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo (2017) illustrate two very different uses of the literary...

“This undiscovered country” in Máirtín Ó Cadhain’s Cré na Cille and George Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo

Published Online: Feb 25, 2019

Page range: 25 - 33

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/ausp-2018-0002

Keywords
the fantastic, Irish classic, Civil War, Bardo, cemetery

© 2018 Donald E. Morse, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

“This undiscovered country” in Máirtín Ó Cadhain’s Cré na Cille and George Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo

Published Online: Feb 25, 2019

Page range: 25 - 33

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/ausp-2018-0002

Keywordsthe fantastic, Irish classic, Civil War, Bardo, cemetery

© 2018 Donald E. Morse, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Keywords
the fantastic, Irish classic, Civil War, Bardo, cemetery