Sebastian Barry’s Portrayal of History’s Marginalised People

Abstract

This paper addresses two groups of novels by Sebastian Barry and discusses his treatment of characters who have been marginalized by the dominant Irish historical narrative, based on the stories of
members of his own family and argues that Barry’s aim is not to produce a revisionist account of Irish history or justify minority positions. It is rather to present the plight of often isolated individuals and to reveal the complexity of the situations in which they find themselves. The paper uses recent theoretical writing on individual and collective memory and the relationship between memory and history.