Landscapes in Movement: Cosmopolitanism and the Poetics of Space in Colum McCann’s Fiction

Abstract

In a book published in 2001, Space and the Irish Cultural Imagination, Gerry Smyth discusses the fact that according to him ‘modern Ireland is obsessed with issues of space’ (Smyth, 2001, p. xiv). Relying upon such theoretical sources as Heidegger’s writings on space in The Question of Being, Gaston Bachelard in The Poetics of Space, Michel Foucault, Edward Soja’s Postmodern Geography, or Raymond Williams’s The Country and the City, Smyth sets out to demonstrate the dominating importance of space and place in Irish cultural practices. In order to illustrate his point he tackles very different issues, such as the development of tourism in Ireland, or the practice of mapping and placenaming; he devotes another chapter to poetry, considered as a cultural practice labouring under the weight of the special relationship between ‘place and Irish identity’ (Smyth, 2001, p. 56). In this miscellaneous approach of the subject of space in Ireland, Smyth also includes a thorough analysis of space in Seamus Deane’s Reading in the Dark (Deane, 1996), and of space and place in the music of U2. All through the book, he makes clear what he calls the ‘paradox concerning the relationship between time and space in Ireland’ (Smyth, 2001, p. 19), namely the emphasis on issues of history as the key to an understanding of Ireland, whereas, according to him ‘matters of space… have been of the utmost importance in the formation of Irish character and culture’ (Smyth, 2001, p. 20).