SOURCE: "Stereotypical Images of Ireland in John Banville's Fiction," in Eire-Ireland, Vol. XXIII, No. 3, Fall, 1988, pp. 94-102.

In the following essay, McMinn analyzes the way Banville portrays Ireland and its people in his fiction.

To examine the imaginative role which Ireland plays in the novels of John Banville might seem like missing the point of a fiction which shows little regard for historical fact and less faith in the narrative manoeuvres of realism. Like the young Gabriel Godkin in Birchwood, who learned geography from his Aunt Martha, "not its facts but its poetry," Banville employs images of Ireland as metaphors for emotion and perception. Some of these images—such as the Big House—are almost institutionalised literary fictions. This is precisely why Banville likes them: they are fictional counters to play with in his own self-enclosed literary design. The wealth of literary cliché and stereotype in Irish literature...