Colin MacCabe, The Butcher Boy

Lebargy Mathias. Colin MacCabe, The Butcher Boy. In: Études irlandaises, n°33 n°1, 2008. p. 184

Reading Music Whilst Listening to the Novel: The Musical Experience of Breakfast on Pluto

With about a hundred references to music, Patrick McCabe’s fiction is deeply penetrated by music. The titles of The Butcher Boy, Breakfast on Pluto and Call Me the Breeze, which are borrowed from songs, attest this influence, and we must keep in mind that Breakfast on Pluto alone gathers more than one third of all the musical references. This essay intends to analyse how music manifests itself in Breakfast on Pluto, and how it shapes the novel.Avec une centaine de références à la musique, l’œuvre romanesque de Patrick McCabe est manifestement influencée et pénétrée par la musique. En témoignent d’emblée The Butcher Boy, Breakfast on Pluto et Call Me the Breeze dont les titres sont empruntés à des chansons. Breakfast on Pluto regroupe, à lui seul, plus d’un tiers des références à la musique. Le but de cet article est d’étudier comment la musique est présente dans Breakfast on Pluto, et comment elle structure ce roman

Music and the Irish Imagination

Irish music holds pride of place among the cultural attributes defining Ireland, and its role in shaping national identity is undisputed. To question these certainties which tend to convey a restrictive notion of a so-called Irish music, the first Irish music studies conference in France, which took place at the université de Caen Basse-Normandie on September 10th-12th, 2008, brought together Irish studies scholars, musicologists and musicians from Ireland and from France. Proceeding from this conference, this collection of essays places itself in the context of the fairly recent development of music studies as an area of scholarship within Irish studies. After an introductory essay by Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, head of the Irish World Music Academy and chair of Culture Ireland, other articles look at issues such as (re-)defining, instrumentalising, performing, staging and listening to Irish music. In this volume, studies of form, setting, repertoire, political and ideological exploitation and government policy sit alongside explorations of music motifs and themes in literature and on the stage