Fictional representations of Roger Casement

• Grant number: 11/18477-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: December 01, 2011
• End date: September 30, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Modern Foreign Literatures
• Principal Investigator: Laura Patricia Zuntini de Izarra
• Grantee: Mariana Bolfarine
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 13/01451-6 - Fictional representations of Roger Casement, BE.EP.DR

Abstract

The troubled and controversial life of Roger Casement, the hero of Irish nationalism who was sentenced to death for high treason by the British Crown, has inspired writers to produce works of various literary genres: prose, poetry, drama and critical essays. Casement was born in Dublin in 1864. Years later, he joined English metropolis and, believing in the "civilizing mission" of the empire, he left for the colonies. He spent twenty years in Africa and seven in Brazil, which resulted not only in written reports that provoked outrage in Britain and the world, but in his transformation from imperialist to Irish nationalist and in his contribution to the rising fight for human rights. This thesis aims at analyzing and questioning the relationship between history and fiction and the reconstruction of the historical figure of Roger Casement in literary texts by writers of different periods and backgrounds that focus on three moments of his life: firstly, The Lost World ( 1912) by Arthur Conan Doyle, and El sueño del celta (2010), by Mario Vargas Llosa, about his time in Brazil, specifically in the Amazon region; secondly, Who is Roger Casement (2010), by Michael Laubscher, that addresses his trial and execution, and thirdly, Cries from Casement to his Bones are Brought to Dublin (1974), by David Rudkin, on his exhumation. While approaching the different contexts of production of each work we hypothesize that the complexities generated by the construction of the fictional character of Roger Casement engender a poetics of ambiguity. (AU)

Academic Publications

(References retrieved automatically from State of São Paulo Research Institutions)

BOLFARINE, Mariana. Between \Angels and Demons\: trauma in fictional representations of Roger Casement. 2015. Doctoral Thesis - Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD) São Paulo.