Your assignment is to prepare and submit a paper on star of the sea as historiographic metafiction.

Your assignment is to prepare and submit a paper on star of the sea as historiographic metafiction. The Great Famine in Ireland caused over 1 million deaths and emigration of a population of 2.5 million people, thus qualifying as one of the most disastrous famines known in the history of modern Europe. “The winter of 1846 to 1847 was unusually cold, and bad weather exacerbated the famine’s effects by making it dif?cult or impossible to work outdoors, the major form of government relief” (Encyclopedia of Labor History Worldwide, n.d., p. 136). Although the Irish potato famine caused irreparable loss to the helpless Irish labor, yet it contributed to the wage-labor force in many English-speaking countries around the world. Irish refugees affected by famine made part of the workforce in England, Australia, and America. Although the potato famine in Ireland was one of the worst of its kinds, yet the consequences could have been avoided with proper management of the country’s resources. Particularly, the UK’s food resources were more than sufficient to help relieve famine in Ireland. The Great Famine forms a typical milieu for the narratives that attempt to de-essentialize the perceptions of Irishness since the Great Famine was such a time in the history of Ireland which dispossessed the whole Irish nation through dispersion. Literature that defines the Irish nation as isolated agrarians tends to overlook the significance of ambiguity in the national identity. Introduction to Historiographic Metafiction The term “historiographic metafiction” was coined by Linda Hutcheon who is a literary theorist. Hutcheon has defined historiographic metafiction as novels that have gained a lot of popularity and attention and contain the traits of being extremely self-reflexive and claiming to the personages of historical significance. Historiographic metafiction is a type of postmodern novel that annuls the reflection of contemporary norms and beliefs upon the past and emphasizes upon the particularity of the event that has occurred in the past. Historiographic metafiction proposes a difference between facts and events which many historians share. Owing to the fact that the documents serve as the symbols of events that are transmuted by the historians into facts, the lesson that can be drawn from this is that the history once existed, though the human knowledge about the past is transmitted semiotically. Historiographic metafiction frequently refers to the fact with the help of paratextual conventions of historiography in order to carve as well as challenge the power of historical texts and sources (Hutcheon, 1988, p. 122-123). Historiographic metafiction heavily relies on numerous elements including historical reconceptualization, parody, and textual form of play, and is a strictly postmodern form of art. Novels and textual plays that can be included in the category of historiographic metafiction include but are not limited to In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje, Midnight’s Childern by Salman Rushdie, and Star of the Sea by Joseph O’Connor, as each of these novels give accounts of historical events that have happened in different parts of the world. Star of the Sea as Historiographic Metafiction Star of the Sea by Joseph O’Connor is an Irish novel published in the year 2002.