Mapping Irishness on the American Frontier: Metaphorical Imagery and Cultural Memory in Kevin Barry’s The Heart in Winter

Kodó, Krisztina (2026) Mapping Irishness on the American Frontier: Metaphorical Imagery and Cultural Memory in Kevin Barry’s The Heart in Winter. In: Hungarian Perspectives on Ireland. Károli Könyvek. Tanulmánykötet . L'Harmattan Kiadó; Károli Gáspár Református Egyetem; Éditions L'Harmattan; L’Harmattan Open Access, Budapest, Paris, pp. 210-224. ISBN 9782336615448; 9789636465940

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Abstract

This article explores how Kevin Barry’s The Heart in Winter (2024) reimagines Irish cultural memory and identity within a transnational context. Set in Butte, Montana, among Irish immigrants at the end of the nineteenth century, the novel transforms the American frontier into a site of remembrance and reinvention. Drawing on Pierre Nora’s “lieux de mémoire” and Aleida and Jan Assmann’s theories of cultural memory, the study examines how exile and displacement reshape collective identity through narrative and ritual. Barry’s grotesque humor, violent imagery, and lyrical prose operate as stylistic carriers of memory, translating trauma into aesthetic endurance. Through a multidirectional framework informed by Michael Rothberg’s theory of global memory, the article argues that The Heart in Winter constructs an Irishness that survives through transformation, while demonstrating how literature enables memory to migrate beyond the nation, preserving identity through imaginative continuity rather than geographic permanence.

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