“May There Be No Frost on Your Potatoes, Nor Worms in Your Cabbage”: Irish Neo-Victorianism and the Great Famine in Joseph O’Connor’s Star of the Sea, Emma Donoghue’s The Wonder, Paul Lynch’s Grace

Drawing from studies on the Irish novel, this thesis analyses the development of Neo-Victorian fiction in Ireland. The novel as a literary form required a long time to develop in Ireland for several reasons, among which the lack of stability and social unrest that characterised the country, the imposition of strict censorship on authors, and the influence of traumatic experiences such as the Great Famine; moreover, a strong oral tradition hindered the development of written forms. Moving from this difficult start to contemporary fiction, it is possible to observe a rich production of Neo-Victorian novels in Ireland in the period of economic and social changes known as the Celtic Tiger: this thesis considers Irish Neo-Victorianism and its connection with this context and with the emergence of trauma literature, as it is a tool for voicing taboo themes and marginalized people in Victorian society while promoting a strong depiction of Irish identity through the description of the hardships endured by the Irish population. In particular, the analysis of Joseph O’Connor’s novel Star of the Sea (2002), Emma Donoghue’s The Wonder (2016) and Paul Lynch’s Grace (2017) deals with the issues of trauma through the representation of themes such as the Irish migration, the Irish Catholic nuclear family, incest and hunger. The discussion on the novels argues for the relevance of the themes embedded in them both to the Victorian contexts and to contemporary Ireland.