Change, Stasis and Celtic Tiger Ireland in the Short Stories of There Are Little Kingdoms (2007) by Kevin Barry

Abstract

This essay focuses on Irish writer Kevin Barry’s first collection of short stories, There Are Little Kingdoms (2007). The Ireland depicted in this work is the Ireland of the new millennium – a territory facing the transformations of Celtic Tiger prosperity. The analysis of these short stories, which provide several snapshots of contemporary Ireland, will explore how the Republic depicted in Barry’s work is a territory in some ways bound to its rural past, often characterised by its short-sightedness despite pretensions of development. Changes are occurring, but at the same time stasis permeates the scenarios of the plots. The irony is salient, considering that the Celtic Tiger era is a time associated with prosperity and joy, yet the lives and stories of the characters of There Are Little Kingdoms (2007), as this essay will reveal, are downbeat.

Keywords

• celtic tiger
• ireland
• crisis
• prosperity
• the irish short story.