It's an undergraduate's dream: writing a final-year thesis, having publishers vie for publication rights and then finally seeing all your hard effort translated into a sleek and shiny book.
For Tatiana Pais Becher, a postgraduate student in Anglo-Irish literature and drama at UCD, it's a dream come true. Pais Becher, who comes from Auronzo di Cadore in the Italian Dolomites, graduated in 1997 from IULM (the Institute of Modern Languages, Milan). For her final-year thesis she authored U2: Irish in Every Other Way - Connections and Consequences in a Cultural Tradition. "Everything started from my passion for U2's music when I was 13," she recalls. "When I was 17, I came to Ireland and fell in love with the country and the people and spent six months as an au pair with an Irish family. "I read an article by Dr Brendan Kennelly on Achtung Baby and one by Bono on The Book of Judas. In my second year at university, I decided I wanted to find a connection between U2's lyrics and Irish literature and culture." Her research brought her back to Ireland and involved interviews with Bono, the Edge and Kennelly. They were bemused, she says, that an Italian would be so interested in their music and poetry.
Following the Italian custom, Pais Becher's father sent information on her graduation to the local paper. He also included details of the subject of her thesis. All of this was picked up by the national papers and Tatiana Pais Becher became something of a celebrity in a country where U2's popularity is enormous: two publishing houses competed for the right to publish her thesis.
She then had to set about translating it into Italian - she had written it in English. Bono suggested the title of the thesis, she says. "U2 are widely regarded as being connected to the American rock tradition and their Irishness is overlooked," she argues. "Their roots are in Ireland." In her book, Pais Becher examines the bardic tradition and the role of poetry in Ireland and the links between music, dance and poetry in Irish culture. The lyrics of My Wild Irish Rose are examined in relation to the Yeats poem, Down by the Sally Gardens. The influence of Patrick Kavanagh's style and poetry on Bono's writing is highlighted and Kavanagh's poem October is compared with U2's song of the same name. Although it was her undergraduate thesis in Italy, Pais Becher will present a paper on her work at UCD's postgraduate day on March 3rd.
