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(2016) Walking and the aesthetics of modernity, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
The art of the "good step" in Colm Tóibín's Bad blood
a walk along the Irish border (1987)
Marie Mianowski
pp. 267-277
In the summer of 1986, Colm Tóibín set off on a walk along the Irish Border. From the outset, choosing to walk along the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland implied a political perspective. In 1986 the "Northern Ireland peace process' was still not on the agenda and the choice of the Border as a walking space was therefore a highly symbolic one, but its mapping was unsettled and uncertain. While exploring Tóibín's narrative and topographic detours, I will also examine how well Tim Robinson's definition of "a good step" applies to Tóibín's enterprise, as every step "carries [him] across geologies, biologies, myths, histories, politics, and trips [him] with the trailing Rosa spinosissima of personal associations' (Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage, 1986, 20).
Publication details
DOI: 10.1057/978-1-137-60364-7_19
Full citation:
Mianowski, M. (2016)., The art of the "good step" in Colm Tóibín's Bad blood: a walk along the Irish border (1987), in K. Benesch & F. Specq (eds.), Walking and the aesthetics of modernity, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 267-277.
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