The Irish Essay as Form: Memory and the Visual World – Shawn Gillen

Wednesday, March 11, 2015 - 00:00

In “The Essay as Form” (1958), Theodor Adorno writes that the essay’s innermost law is heresy against the orthodoxy of thought. “By transgressing the orthodoxy of thought,” Adorno writes, “something becomes visible in the object which it is orthodoxy’s secret purpose to keep invisible.”  This talk will describe how Adorno’s writing about the form illuminates essays by several Irish authors, and it will argue that these same writers also contribute to the genres aesthetic evolution. Ernie O’Malley, Hubert Butler, Edna O’Brien, and John McGahern are foremost among the essayists to be discussed.

Professor Gillen teaches courses in creative writing, American and Irish literature, digital writing, and journalism at Beloit College.  He has written a collection of personal essays and autobiographical fiction, excerpts of which appeared in the Colorado Review and the North Atlantic Review. He has published scholarly essays on J. M. Synge, Henry James, and Edith Wharton. He has also published essays on American comic book figures such as Captain America and written numerous critical essays on jazz and rock musicians. His fiction, music criticism, and journalism have appeared in a variety of publications, and he has worked as a staff writer and editor for several literary journals, newspapers, and music publications. Professor Gillen has served as a visiting professor and research fellow at the University of Glasgow and has been a scholar-in-residence and visiting professor at the Newberry Library in Chicago, Illinois.