For the sake of brevity, I want to use an extract from Claire Hutton’s recent essay “The Moment and Technique of Milkman” to outline some of ‘Milkman’s main preoccupations. In this text, Hutton contextualises the production and circulation of Burns’s “Milkman” in relation to Faber&Faber’s other publishing success of the same year, Sally Rooney’s ‘Normal People.’
1 – the first of these research questions is, in which ways does Burns’ use of repetition renaming in “The Milkman” explore modes of, late twentieth century, Irish resistance to British occupation?
