Overdoing the Synge-song
Terry Eagleton
- On Canaan’s Side by Sebastian Barry
Faber, 256 pp, £16.99, August 2011, ISBN 978 0 571 22653 5
In the great lineage of classical realism from Stendhal to Tolstoy, a whole history is summarised in the fortunes of a particular family or set of characters. Individuals are portrayed in all their idiosyncrasy, but are made to represent more than themselves. Things are at once unique and exemplary. A belatedly flowering example of the species is The Leopard, in which the slow decay of a Sicilian nobleman coincides with the clamorous rise of bourgeois Italy.
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Vol. 33 No. 18 · 22 September 2011 » Terry Eagleton » Overdoing the Synge-song
pages 15-16 | 2948 words