RT Book, Section
T1 He’s Been Wanting to Say That for a Long Time”: Varieties of Silence in Colm Tóibín’s Fiction
A1 Carregal Romero, José
AB This chapter explores the multivalent significance of silence in Colm Tóibín’s fiction, from his debut novel The South (1990) to his collection of stories The Empty Family (2010). The chapter considers Colm Tóibín’s use of silence as an aesthetic practice and key narrative element that foregrounds the tensions between revelation and concealment, emotional release and reticence, as well as the ambiguities between knowing and unknowing, which underlie most of his protagonists’ dilemmas. The analysis pays attention to how Tóibín dramatises sexual taboos and traumas—i.e. familial homophobia and AIDS stigma—through narratives that develop within the domain of personal silences. The chapter thus identifies and assesses a discourse of silence running through Tóibín’s oeuvre, which constructs his characters’ psychology as they navigate personal and social pressures, and attempt to come to terms with their emotional truths.
PB Springer
SN 978-3-031-30454-5
SN 978-3-031-30455-2 (electrónico)
YR 2023
FD 2023
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10272/22608
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10272/22608
LA eng
NO Carregal-Romero, J. (2023). “He’s Been Wanting to Say That for a Long Time”: Varieties of Silence in Colm Tóibín’s Fiction. In: Caneda-Cabrera, M.T., Carregal-Romero, J. (eds) Narratives of the Unspoken in Contemporary Irish Fiction. New Directions in Irish and Irish American Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30455-2_4
NO The research for this chapter was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, the European Regional Development Fund and the Spanish Research Agency through the Research Projects “INTRUTHS Inconvenient Truths: Cultural Practices of Silence in Contemporary Irish Fiction” FFI2017-84619-P AEI/FEDER, UE and “INTRUTHS 2: Articulations of Individual and Communal Vulnerabilities in Contemporary Irish Writing” PID2020-114776GB-I00 MCIN/AEI.
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Huelva
RD 31 may 2026