Brian Moore's Unsettling Irish Immigrant: The Luck of Ginger Coffey.
This essay recuperates Brian Moore's mostly forgotten classic of Canadian immigrant fiction, The Luck of Ginger Coffey (1960), in a reading of its protagonist as a study in the necessary self-renovation of a new Canadian. Employing the scholarly work that has been done on the Irish in Canada over th...
| Publicado en: | Journal of Canadian Studies Vol. 49; no. 3; pp. 55 - 76 |
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| Formato: | Literary Criticism |
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University of Toronto Press
Fall2015
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| Sumario: | This essay recuperates Brian Moore's mostly forgotten classic of Canadian immigrant fiction, The Luck of Ginger Coffey (1960), in a reading of its protagonist as a study in the necessary self-renovation of a new Canadian. Employing the scholarly work that has been done on the Irish in Canada over the past few decades, this essay contextualizes its reading of Moore's mid-century novel in a mildly corrective history of Irish immigration to that point. Ginger Coffey will also be seen to prefigure--on the eve of Canada's officially becoming the much-admired multicultural nation it is today--the central question facing Canadians respecting immigration. The unaccommodating setting of Ginger Coffey, its historical contexts, and its compromising immigrant's (Ginger Coffey's) hard-won promise of eventual integration into Canadian society challenge readers to entertain questions about the extent of Canada's tolerance of immigrants' tenaciously mistaken dreams. Cet article examine une oeuvre fictive classique sur l'immigration canadienne par Brian Moore qui a été presque oubliée - The Luck of Ginger Coffey (i960). L'article présente le protagoniste vivant l'auto-rénovation nécessaire d'un nouveau Canadien. S'inspirant d'études sur les Irlandais au Canada réalisées au cours des dernières décennies, l'article contextualise sa lecture du roman de Moore rédigé au milieu du siècle dans une histoire quelque peu corrective de l'immigration irlandaise jusqu'à ce moment. Ce roman est perçu comme un précurseur - juste avant que le Canada devienne officiellement la nation multiculturelle très admirée d'aujourd'hui - de la question importante de l'immigration au Canada. Le milieu réticent de Ginger Coffey, ses contextes historiques et sa promesse durement acquise et pleine de compromis de l'intégration de l'immigrant (Ginger Coffey) dans la société canadienne défient les lecteurs de réfléchir à la façon dont le Canada a toléré les aspirations erronées mais tenaces des immigrants. |
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