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The Hermeneutics of Place: A Structuralist Reading of William Trevor’s The Silence in the Garden

Focusing on ‘Carriglas’ in William Trevor’s novel, The Silence in the Garden (1988), the research aims at investigating the role of ‘place’ as a hermeneutical tool of literary analysis. It works within a structuralist framework to trace ‘Carriglas’ as a place which gathers all the characters and from which spring all the events in the novel. It, thus, serves as a structuralist link around which all the novel is centered. The research gets from discussing the hermeneutics of place in the novel heading a step forward to prove place as a hermeneutical means in itself. This brings into discussion the theme of the ‘Big House’ in Irish literature as a predominant distinctive Irish element in the novel. Attempting at centralizing ‘place’, the research branches into two levels. The first level goes into proving the text to be place-oriented. The second level works through assigning ‘place’ the characteristics of a ‘text’, showing how ‘place’ is itself texualized in the novel. The narrative structure is also brought under spot in a way that highlights the literary significance of ‘Carriglas’ as a haunting element in the text. Bringing the two levels together, place is clearly shown to be both a theme as well a literary tool used by Trevor to address the long strife between the Irish and the English. Rolling down the two levels, upon which the discussion of ‘place’ in Trevor’s novel is based, one finds that place proves to have a hermeneutical literary function that is rendered crucial for understanding the novel itself.