Boundaries of the Field Borders of the Mind Patrick Kavanagh's "Tarry Flynn" (original) (raw)

2021, Exploring Borders and Boundaries in the Humanities

Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967), in his most acclaimed novel, "Tarry Flynn" (1948), gives the account of a young farmer as well as providing an authentic portrayal of the life and mentality of the Irish peasantry in the 1930s. Cavan, the locale limned in the novel, is characterized by the traditional, conservative, religious and parochial outlook of its residents. Struck by poverty and struggling to survive by hinging on farming, people of the village confine themselves dogmatically to the principles and limitations of the Catholic Church. Tarry Flynn, Kavanagh’s eponymous protagonist, on the other hand, is distinguished from the rest of this insular community. Tarry is the portrait of an artist as a farmer; he is a poet and avid reader of literature who is frequently absorbed in his dreams while working in his beloved potato and turnip fields. He is an impassioned and unorthodox individualist who descries the beauty in details and feels allured by the charms of nature. His artistic spirit and powerful imagination enable him to go beyond ‘boundaries of the field and borders of the mind’ drawn by the Church and society’s restrictive conventions. The issue of border, in this respect, is considered a significant leitmotif metaphorically woven in the narrative. This paper argues that Tarry Flynn, as a work by an author ahead of his time, is an explicit and audacious challenge to Ireland’s sociocultural constraints which generated the borders and limits in Irish people’s lives for ages.