Stereotyping no more: Contemporary Irish literature and its reevaluation of pub life and the bachelor's group in Ireland

This dissertation offers a comparative study of pub life within Irish Modern literature to pub life within contemporary Irish literature, travel literature, and sociological responses to the impacts of alcohol use in Ireland. This comparison hinges on the avunculate and its creation of the bachelor group. Richard Stivers in Hair of the Dog, provides a representation of the avunculate in Ireland, noting: Social and emotional needs of young men, especially those of friendship, guidance and recreation, were met in that male group...Thus the generations were linked in a relationship of authority and subordination, father-son, and in a relationship of friendship, maternal uncle (bachelor group member)-nephew (bachelor group initiate) (76) The bachelor group was the preeminent social element in the culture---exclusive to men in pubs, and indulging in levels of harmless craic. This dissertation details how Irish Modernist writers portrayed these virtues in their writings.;However, this environment is problematized by an over-indulgence in alcohol and the negative commodification it has levied on the culture. As Justin Brophy notes in "Alcohol, Culture and Suicide in Ireland: Exploring the Connections," drinking is a hidden problem in Ireland: This self-image of a heavy-drinking people with high tolerance for drunkenness has been the perfect cover for equally heavy promotion. Our misguided tolerance for excessive drinking opened the door for these initiatives and now the full extent of our drinking problems appears to come as a surprise (86). This realization comes to life in contemporary Irish writing which provides examples of how the purity of the bachelor group has become perverted, dangerous, and culturally destructive. Focus on familial breakdown, explosion of the avunculate with the inclusion of women and children in public drinking, and dangerous or extreme craic with emphases on domestic violence, rape, cultural self-destruction, and cultural oppression predominate.;The comparison between literary periods resolves itself by directly comparing Joyce's Farrington from "Counterparts" and Doyle's Paula Spencer from The Woman Who Walked into Doors and Paula Spencer illustrating how contemporary Irish writers are combating the cultural characteristics of the bachelor group in favor of providing depth to the character of the Irish spirit.