Escaping her biography : Maeve Brennan's 'Nomadic Consciousness'

Abstract

The introduction of the thesis makes clear the vital need for this study and explains how its methodology privileges theoretical positions over biographical narratives as it centres on close readings of some of Brennan's work and private papers. The introduction also defines what is meant by the, often ambiguous, term "autobiographical" and explains the manner in which the thesis proceeds by replacing this reductive biographical model with a more inclusive and precise one that links the postcolonial concerns of place, belonging and displacement, with contemporary ideas of spatiality, to identify a nomadic consciousness in the work of Brennan.