Permanence and transgression of the revenge tragedy motif in Stuart Neville’s The Twelve (2009) A hauntological reading of a Northern-Irish thriller

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Thierry Robin

Abstract

The concept of "hauntology" - a word combining both haunting and ontology – was coined by Jacques Derrida to characterise a situation where an ideology that is no longer operative continues to haunt a place, informing its ongoing representations, its latent conflicts. The term refers to a temporal disjunction where the past persists in the present through the paradoxical observation that something has been lost but persists in the spirit of the place.


Northern Ireland embodies this concept, as its history, geography and institutions are marked by a radical political schizophrenia stemming from a troubled past that even the peace process has not managed to erase.


In The twelve (2009), Stuart Neville questions the feasibility and consequences of coming to terms with one’s past when confronted with this haunting. Gerry Fegan, an IRA hitman, drowned in alcohol and depression, is shown to be obsessed, haunted by the ghosts of his twelve victims.


This article assesses the extent to which the book simultaneously renews the usual codes of thrillers and takes up the hackneyed classical tropes of the Elizabethan revenge tragedy, in a move that echoes the postmodern concept of differential repetition.

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How to Cite
Robin, T. (2021). Permanence and transgression of the revenge tragedy motif in Stuart Neville’s The Twelve (2009): A hauntological reading of a Northern-Irish thriller. Imaginaires, (23), 118-130. https://doi.org/10.34929/imaginaires.vi23.27
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Author Biography

Thierry Robin, Université d'Orléans

Thierry Robin is a professor of anglophone studies at the University of Orléans. His research focuses on contemporary Irish literature and the connections between ideology, epistemology and the concept of reality, notably through the genre of satire. He has written numerous articles about Irish writers including Flann O’Brien, Samuel Beckett, Anne Enright, Dermot Healy and John Banville, amongst others. He has also published a book devoted to the study of Flann O’Brien’s novels, entitled Flann O’Brien, Un voyageur au bout du langage (2008) and coedited a collection of essays bearing on political ideology, Political Ideology in Ireland from the Enlightenment to the Present, (2009). He is currently completing a monograph on Irish crime fiction, which should be published by late 2022.