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In:Practising Stylistics: Essays in Honour of Paul Simpson
Edited by Clara Neary, Simon Statham and Peter Stockwell
[Linguistic Approaches to Literature 45] 2026
► pp. 243–252

Chapter 19: Vignette
The rhythm of the humdrum and the clamour of the lambeg

Narratives, style, and Irish identities

 | University of Kent
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Abstract
Recalling the distinction between different points of view put forward by Simpson (1993), in this chapter Jeremy Scott performs a narratological analysis of the Pat McCabe novel The Butcher Boy (1992) and Eureka Street (1996) by Robert McLiam Wilson. Scott examines the novels’ divergent use of demotic narrative voices to explore the construction of different types of identity, demonstrating how relationships between narrative discourse and identity differ in these stories: McCabe’s protagonist descending into madness, bereft of his own voice and without a coherent identity whilst McLiam Wilson on the other hand uses heteroglossia as a celebratory response to violence and the constraints of the Irish identity. In closing, he develops a creative trope that contrasts the everyday (the humdrum) with the large bass drum (the lambeg) that often features in Unionist marches in Northern Ireland.
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