The “Tinkers” in Irish Literature: Unsettled Subjects and the Construction of Difference (review)

Contemporary Irish Studies scholars often read literature from a sociological perspective, which is to some degree part of a general tendency toward historicist modes of analysis that seeks to develop deep contexts for literary study. For José Lanters, Irish Traveller culture is a neglected context for Irish literature; her new book explores a wide variety of works, mostly fiction, drama, and film. Lanters’s warrant is to explore the role of the Traveller or “tinker” figure in literature, from the early nineteenth century to the present, with some attention in the second half to film and television. She is less interested in the analysis of Traveller culture itself, though a good deal of the research on this subject finds its way into this study.

Lanters’s methodology is simple and, by and large, effective. Chapters are organized historically, though four of the seven chapters concern specific genres (children’s literature, fantasy and detective fiction, and life writing). Given the relatively obscure nature of many of the texts under analysis, Lanters felt it necessary to include a good deal of plot summary. The reader unfamiliar with these texts will be grateful for these summaries, though at times they blunt the force of the argument. The book’s basic argument is plain: “to consider how Traveller ‘difference’ has been constructed in Irish literature over time and in various ways according to the sedentary perspective.” Lanters is particularly good at describing how this “difference” is represented, though some readers might feel the lack of a more explicit theoretical approach to the concept of difference and the ramifications of its representation. For instance, the name of Henry Louis Gates (to cite only one example), particularly his theory of “signifyin(g),” seemed conspicuously absent; his would have been a useful lens through which to understand a minority culture that uses language in a deliberate attempt to overcome the hegemony of a dominant “settled” culture. The distinction between Travellers and settled people, and the “sedentary norms” that define settled society, is a fascinating one, and it could usefully be approached by way of current theories in postcolonial studies that focus on nomadism, migrancy, and refugees. To be fair, Lanters does cite critics who appear to have just this sort of theoretical perspective.

These quibbles may be regarded and swiftly set aside as the grumblings of an avowed theoretical reader, who cannot resist the temptation to appropriate the book and make it his own; only an important, even a necessary book, can provoke this reaction. Many readers will find themselves enlightened by Lanters’s sensitive readings of texts that are rife with the difficulties that come into play when a member of a dominant culture attempts to represent a minority “outsider” culture. The task of representation is made all the more difficult when the outsider can make credible claims to indigenous status. The first chapter considers various theories of origin, including the idea that Travellers emerged from the breakdown of monastic orders and from the deprivations of the famine years; but Lanters implies, as do many of the Travellers she cites, that we can expect to find patterns of dispersion rather than a single definitive origin. An important historical starting point occurs in the sixteenth century, which witnessed the “criminalization” of Traveller culture, for nomadism “caused anxiety in early modern England, and led to legislation that increasingly distinguished between criminally inclined ‘vagrants’ and the law-abiding sedentary population.” Irish Travellers, or “tinkers” as they were often called—the name derives from a popular belief that Travellers were at one time itinerant tinsmiths—were subjected to ill treatment and the kind of stereotypes that were visited upon the Roma or “gypsies” and other “unsettled” peoples.

Travellers began to appear in literature fairly regularly by the 1830s, and with William Carelton’s fiction at midcentury, there arises a concern for rehabilitation, grounded in the “moralizing discourse of...