Postgraduate Researchers

PhD Research Student - School of Tourism and Hospitality Management

Project abstract:

‘All written texts have to be related in some way directly and indirectly to sound- the natural habitat of language to yield to their meaning.’ 

Orality Walter Ong

My research question and hypothesis concern the short stories of the writer and novelist John McGahern, short stories which span much of his creative writing life. 

I believe great short stories are incipient dramas and have all the elements of drama at their core: plot, action, characterization, narration, description, dialogue and most important a key happening or event, what John McGahern called ‘an explosion.’ 

My plan throughout my research is to record a selection of John McGahern’s short stories as full radio dramas, exactly as he wrote them, on the locations in which they are placed, using actors from the areas in which they were written- Roscommon Sligo Leitrim- and with the natural western soundscape as their aural wild track background.     

My research hypothesis will explore how the power of the human voice and the power of the natural landscape can enhance, illuminate and give new life and energy to the power of John McGahern’s short stories which he wrote for the eye as a literary form, but which I believe are natural vocal dramas and have great and new strength as such.   

My hypothesis will also explore how the natural sound landscape in which McGahern’s stories are placed can be proved, through dramatization, to parallel the speech patterns, dialogue and narrative descriptions of his text.  

The recordings and their power will study whether the natural soundscape can have an effect on vocal harmonies and melodies of spoken language within the natural sounded environment of the dramatizations. Ear voice and sound symbolism, the rhythm and temperature of the natural soundscape, and understanding the balance mechanism.                                                                     

Natural sound is an indicator of meaning and can also dictate how we behave and how behaviour is determined by sound. It can also illuminate the subtilities and complexities of language and bring new and finer meanings to text. When we speak aloud the spoken word becomes ‘word music in action’ and great texts can be understood and connected more profoundly, as meaning is always buried in sound. Some key questions that my exploration will hope to reveal are: 

What are the sounds that accentuate enlarge, develop, move, punctuate or colour the short stories of John McGahern?  How does he use them within a literary form? Where and why does he use them? In what way do they enhance the mood and context and atmosphere of his work? In what way when we hear his work spoken and dramatized out loud within its natural environment, do they reveal new and complex meaning?                                          When does the short story writer become a dramatist?                                                                                                                                                          

Supervisors: Dr Eamon Maher, Dr Brian A Murphy