ࡱ> 02/] bjbjzpzp . b b  U2$=HHHjHHHH7"H%0UH"HHx0"H> UB ^: Name: Dr. Elke D'hoker Affiliation: Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Paper Title: Somerville & Ross and the modern Irish short story The three volumes of R.M. stories which Somerville and Ross published between 1899 and 1915 have always had an ambivalent reception in Irish literary criticism. Quite apart from the controversy about the colonial stereotyping of their work, critics have often seemed uneasy in face of the huge popularity of these comic stories with generations of readers. Frank OConnor famously voiced this uneasiness in the introduction to The Lonely Voice. Although he calls The Irish R.M. one of the most lovable books I know he goes on to dismiss it as a work of art. He claims that the authors forgot all about the French naturalism they deployed in The Real Charlotte and wrote these tales just to enjoy themselves. As a result, he claims, the stories are yarns, pure and simple, without intellectual depth or artistic integrity. In fact, they prove empty or nothing when studied alone by the cold light of day. He concludes: Irish literature has gone Moores way, not Somerville and Rosss (34-7). While recent critics have come to view the artistic achievement of Somerville and Ross in far more positive terms, O'Connor's final verdict on the traditional rather than modern quality of their short fiction still lingers. While recognising that the R.M. stories present an advance on the tale tradition terms of artistic control, Heinz Kosok nevertheless concludes that they belong soziologisch wie literarisch in the 19th century (1982: 131). Heather Ingman too discusses the authors in her chapter on the nineteenth century tale rather than in her chapter on fin-de-sicle short fiction. And although Julie Anne Stevens traces elements of a modernist aesthetic in the stories (e.g. stereotyping, performativity and visual techniques), she notes that their popular and anecdotal short stories were quite different from the so-called literary story that Frank OConnor would later identify as modern in The Lonely Voice (162). While there is no doubt as to the difference between Moores stories in The Untilled Field and the R.M. stories of Somerville and Ross, I would like to test the accuracy of OConnors dual claim, (a) that the authors ignored fin-de-sicle or (proto-)modernist developments in short fiction when writing their stories and (b) that their work is therefore of little consequence for the genre of the modern Irish short story. Since both the thematic and the overall aesthetic dimension of their work has received ample attention in Julie Anne Stevens' illuminating study, I will focus particularly on the formal and narrative structure of their short stories. I will examine such 'modern' features of their work as (a) its unity (both within individual stories and within their short story cycle as a whole), (b) its representation of 'ordinary' reality, and (c) its use of a potentially unreliable character-narrator. I will also compare their work on these points with that of contemporaries such as Kipling, Stevenson and Conrad who have been hailed as originators of the modern short story form. Finally I will consider the importance of the R.M. stories for the tradition of the Irish short story as a whole.  $BP[]bV w     1 A C U ³³whhwhXIhO1Thq%OJQJmH sH hO1Th` 6OJQJmH sH hO1Th0OJQJmH sH hO1Th)OJQJmH sH hO1Th` OJQJmH sH hO1Th%!OJQJmHsHhO1Th4OJQJmH sH hO1Th lVOJQJmH sH hO1ThXOJQJmH sH hO1ThO1TOJQJmHsHhO1ThO1TOJQJmH sH hO1ThO1T5OJQJmH sH Cs gd[EHgdO1TU d  ^ i r s 0#19?D\bdv²£””££„ueuuVuhO1Th%!OJQJmH sH hO1Th&6OJQJmH sH hO1Th&OJQJmH sH hO1Th[EH6OJQJmH sH hO1Th0OJQJmH sH hO1Th&OJQJmH sH hO1Th[EHH*OJQJmH sH hO1Th[EHOJQJmH sH hO1Th)OJQJmH sH hO1Thq%OJQJmH sH hO1Thq%6OJQJmH sH !]a?  ĵĵĦhO1ThcOJQJmH sH hO1Th&OJQJmH sH hO1TheOJQJmH sH hO1Th%!OJQJmH sH hO1Th&OJQJmH sH hO1Th @OJQJmH sH ,1h. A!"#$% s2&6FVfv2(&6FVfv&6FVfv&6FVfv&6FVfv&6FVfv&6FVfv8XV~ 0@ 0@ 0@ 0@ 0@ 0@ 0@ 0@ 0@ 0@ 0@ 0@ 0@ 0@_HmH nH sH tH @`@ NormalCJ_HaJmHsHtHDA D Default Paragraph FontRiR  Table Normal4 l4a (k (No List PK![Content_Types].xmlN0EH-J@%ǎǢ|ș$زULTB l,3;rØJB+$G]7O٭Vc:E3v@P~Ds |w< U   8@0(  B S  ?AmAmAm<BB BGG 9*urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttagsplace8*urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttagsCity  $B;A1? P   q-4)%!q%u7Q98 @[EHO1T lVXehncK` &bm&}+0 @ @UnknownG*Ax Times New Roman5Symbol3. *Cx Arial9GaramondACambria Math"qKg'Kg'f   hh24 2HP(?X0!xx 2Somerville & Ross and the modern Irish short storyu0014427 Linda.MoloneyOh+'0 (4 T ` l x4Somerville & Ross and the modern Irish short story u0014427NormalLinda.Moloney2Microsoft Office Word@@q6@@ ՜.+,0$ hp   KULeuven  3Somerville & Ross and the modern Irish short story Title  !"#$%&()*+,-.1Root Entry F 731TableWordDocument.SummaryInformation(DocumentSummaryInformation8'CompObjr  F Microsoft Word 97-2003 Document MSWordDocWord.Document.89q