Carolan's Farewell

Alicia Kerfoot is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of English and
Cultural Studies at McMaster University.

In Carolan’s Farewell, Charles Foran compellingly combines folklore,
history, fiction, and music to compose a pleasing intertextual read.
Divided into two parts—Dall (Blind) and Ballach (Freckled)—the book
expertly weaves together themes of vision, hearing, identity, and body
through a depiction of relationships, reading, and class conflicts in
18th-century Ireland.

Foran takes the historical character of Terence Carolan, a harpist who
began his training after going blind, and fictionalizes his life in
reference to his imagined assistant, Owen Connor. References to Swift,
Pope, Locke, and many other 18th-century philosophers and writers
abound, as do historical details of famine, war, and class tensions.
Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent is evoked, and Edgeworth’s
acknowledged use of a “real” source (the story of Lady Cathcart) for
a fictional account of a woman imprisoned by her husband also provides
inspiration for Foran, who states that “two centuries later it remains
a good story, if ever more murky history.”

The murkiness of history and its inability to tell of personal
relationships and inner thoughts is a major theme of the novel. Its
narrator is aligned with Carolan’s voice in the first half and
Connor’s voice in the second half. The first half of the novel follows
harpist and guide as they return to their patron’s abode after Carolan
has embarked on a forbidden pilgrimage to a penitent cave. The second
half of the book follows Connor’s attempt to communicate with the ill
Carolan at their patron’s estate.

The author’s ability to evoke visual images through detailed
description is most successful outside of some of the vague historical
details, and his prose is most effective when describing the human (and
animal) relationships in the novel. Foran’s discourse about textual
ownership and oral (especially musical) culture is strengthened by his
blurring of fact and fiction, and by his emphasis on the lack of
difference between the visual, oral, and textual. This thought-provoking
novel involves readers in the creation and narration of the story as a
constructed form that can move beyond the set definitions of genre.