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Irish
literature
• Our civilization is a vast fabric, in which the most diverse elements are mingled, in
which nordic aggressiveness and Roman law, the new bourgeois conventions and
the remnant of a Syriac religion are reconciled. In such a fabric, it is useless to look
for a thread that may have remained pure and virgin without having undergone
the influence of a neighbouring thread. What race, or what language (if we except
the few whom a playful will seems to have preserved in ice, like the people of
Iceland) can boast of being pure today? And no race has less right to utter such a
boast than the race now living in Ireland. Nationality (if it really is not a
convenient fiction like so many others to which the scalpels of present-day
scientists have given the coup de grâce) must find its reason for being rooted in
something that surpasses and transcends and informs changing things like blood
and the human word. The mystic theologian who says somewhere, 'God has
disposed the limits of nations according to his angels’, and this probably is not a
purely mystical concept. Do we not see that in Ireland the Danes, the Firbolgs, the
Milesians from Spain, the Norman invaders, and the Anglo-Saxon settlers have
united to form a new entity, one might say under the influence of a local deity?
And, although the present race in Ireland is backward and inferior, it is worth
taking into account the fact that it is the only race of the entire Celtic family that
has not been willing to sell its birthright for a mess of pottage. (James Joyce,
“Ireland, Island of Saints and Sages”, 1907)
“Inventing Ireland”: literature redraws
topographies
 Towards a definition of “Irish
literature”
• = literature written by Irish-born authors (cf. Oscar
Wilde, G.B. Shaw, Samuel Beckett)

• = literature written in Ireland (cf. Swift, Goldsmith, Trollope)

• = literature written in Gaelic and English (+ Latin,
Norman French, ...)
• = influential representations of Ireland: that
shaped the Irish literary tradition, the self-
understanding of the Irish, and/or that generated
significant responses from Irish authors (cf. Spenser,
View of the Present State of Ireland, 1596)
• 1st authoritative, standard, comprehensive
canon of Irish literature: Field Day Anthology
of Irish Writing (vols. I-III: 1991, vols. IV-V:
2002)
• 1st authoritative, standard, comprehensive
history of Irish literature: The Cambridge
History of Irish Literature (vols. I-II, 2006)
• “...the Irish tendency to challenge, subvert, redefine and/or
merge traditional genres is one of the major forces that gives Irish
literature itsdistinctiveness and vitality, and by no means an
indication that Irish writers have either failed to master the
canonical genres or devoted an inordinate effort to the cultivation
of miniaturist adaptations of major genres from the dominant
English tradition... Irish experimentation with genre goes back to
the very origins of Irish literature... one could see Swift’s satires,
Wilde’s subversions of the well-made play, Synge’s violent
comedies, Yeats’s experiments with Noh drama, O’Casey’s blendings
of high tragedy and farce, and the stylistic experiments of Joyce,
Beckett and Flann O’Brien as only a few of the most conspicuous
examples in a mainstream Irish tradition of revisioning and revising
conventional genres.” (M. Kelleher, Philip O’Leary, Introduction to
The Cambridge History of Irish Literature, vol. I, 5)
Irish literary tradition: a perpetual sense of crisis
and radical innovation of form (Declan Kiberd)
• Irish history: successive falls of (social, economic, cultural)
order generate “meltdowns” in arts ( innovation)
• transition from aristocracy to bourgeoisie: smooth in
Western Europe – abrupt in Ireland (1607: Flight of the
Earls, end of old Gaelic order); native middle-class only
emerges in 20th century
•  order of filí dispossessed, deprived of courts, and
declassed: become nomadic intellectual class – “first
‘dandies’ of Europe” (Kiberd), addressing their reconfigured
poems to a wider public (“market” modernity) 
consciousness of end of an era: sense of modern crisis in
Irish writing
• “Words were among the most potent weapons of
a disarmed people, who resorted to modes of
irony, deceit and wordplay as methods of self-
protection. Sir John Davies was perhaps the first
to notice that coercion made the Irish grow
crafty, for, as he said, ‘such as are oppressed are
ever put to their shifts.’ In a contested land, poets
said one thing while actually meaning another [cf.
Aisling poetry, Cathleen Ni Houlihan]” (D. Kiberd,
The Cambridge History of Irish Literature, 15)
Irish literature from/in the linguistic
divide
’Tundish! Well now, that is interesting!’
(...) The little word seemed to have turned a rapier point of
his sensitiveness against this courteous and vigilant foe. He
felt with a smart of dejection that the man to whom he was
speaking was a countryman of Ben Jonson. He thought:
- The language in which we are speaking is his before it is
mine. How different are the words home, Christ, ale,
master, on his lips and on mine! I cannot speak or write
these words without unrest of spirit. His language, so
familiar and so foreign, will always be for me an acquired
speech. I have not made or accepted its words. My voice
holds them at bay. My soul frets in the shadow of his
language. (P 189)
All around, shards of a lost tradition: […]

The whole landscape a manuscript

We had lost the skill to read,
A part of our past disinherited;
But fumbled, like a blind man,
Along the fingertips of instinct.
(John Montague, A Lost Tradition)
Traumatic modernization
• 1825-40: Ordnance Survey of
Ireland
• 1829: Catholic Emancipation
(enabled Catholics to enter
Parliament, hold military and
civil services)
• 1831: state system of National
Education introduced
(language of tuition: English)
• 1845-51: An Gorta Mór, the
Great Irish Famine
• 1858: Irish Republican
Brotherhood founded by
James Stephens
“I am assured by our merchants, that a boy or a girl before twelve
years old is no salable commodity; and even when they come to
this age they will not yield above three pounds, or three pounds
and half-a-crown at most on the exchange; which cannot turn to
account either to the parents or kingdom, the charge of nutriment
and rags having been at least four times that value.
I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I
hope will not be liable to the least objection.
I have been assured by a very knowing American of my
acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at
a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food,
whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt
that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.”
(Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal, 1729)
• “…Ireland remained in the 19th century, as in the age of
Swift, overtaxed and under-capitalized. Here was another
case, now in the socio-economic realm, of cultural
modernization existing side by side with material
backwardness. It was out of such discrepancies that the art
of Irish modernism at the end of the 19th century would
emerge… If you educate a populace to high levels but leave
them with few outlets for their talents and qualifications,
you are creating the condition for three things – endemic
emigration, cultural efflorescence (as the powerless seize
control of discourse, as only the unarmed can),and,
eventually, rebellion.” (D. Kiberd, The Cambridge History of
Irish Literature, 23)
• The ideal Ireland that we would have, the Ireland that we
dreamed of, would be the home of a people who valued
material wealth only as a basis for right living, of a people
who, satisfied with frugal comfort, devoted their leisure to
the things of the spirit – a land whose countryside would be
bright with cosy homesteads, whose fields and villages
would be joyous with the sounds of industry, with the
romping of sturdy children, the contest of athletic youths
and the laughter of happy maidens, whose firesides would
be forums for the wisdom of serene old age. The home, in
short, of a people living the life that God desires that men
should live. (Eamon De Valera, "On Language and the Irish
Nation", speech on Raidió Éireann, 17 May 1943)
• “I read in the papers that some fine Irishmen have declared that we
must all live like the good folk in the Gaeltacht, leading that simple
life, speaking that far-from-simple language, presumably occupying
ourselves with the uncomplicated agricultural chores which
distinguish all ethnic groups the world over which have been denied
the enervating influence of H.M. English language. Uniquely, a large
section of our people wish to be peasants, thus giving hope of a
return to the primeval balance to which I have referred. To the plain
people of Ireland I will make a fair offer. If, gathering together in
solemn conclave ye pledge yerselves to be humble unsophisticates
unacquainted with English, innocent of all sciences save that of the
smiling Irish fields, I, for my part, am prepared to be King.”
(Myles na gCopaleen [Brian O’Nolan/Flann O’Brien], Cruiskeen
Lawn)
 “The shortest way to Tara is via
Holyhead” (James Joyce)
• It will seem strange that an island as remote as Ireland from the centre of culture could excel as a
school for apostles, but even a superficial consideration will show us that the Irish nation’s
insistence on developing its own culture by itself is not so much the demand of a young nation that
wants to make good in the European concert as the demand of a very old nation to renew under
new forms the glories of a past civilization. Even in the first century of the Christian era, under the
apostleship of St. Peter, we find the Irishman Mansuetus, who was later canonized, serving as a
missionary in Lorraine, where he founded a church and preached for half a century. Cataldus had a
cathedral and two hundred theologians at Geneva, and was later made bishop of’ Taranto. The
great heresiarch Pelagius, a traveller and tireless propagandist, if not an Irishman, as many contend,
was certainly either Irish or Scottish, as was his right hand, Caelestius. Sedulius traversed a great
part of the world, and finally settled at Rome, where he composed the beauties of almost five
hundred theological tracts, and many sacred hymns that are used even today in Catholic ritual.
Fridolinus Viator, that is, the Voyager, of royal Irish stock, was a missionary among the Germans,
and died at Seckingen in Germany, where he is buried. Fiery Columbanus [157] had the task of
reforming the French church, and, after having, started a civil war in Burgundy by his preaching,
went to Italy, where he became the apostle of the Lombards and founded the monastery at Bobbio.
Frigidian, son of the king of northern Ireland, occupied the bishopric of Lucca. St. Gall, who at first
was the student and companion of Columbanus, lived among the Grisons in Switzerland as a
hermit, hunting, and fishing, and cultivating his fields by himself. He refused the bishopric of the
city of Constance, which was offered to him, and died at the age of ninety-five. On the site of his
hermitage an abbey rose, and its abbot became prince of the canton by the grace of God, and
greatly enriched the Benedictine library, whose ruins are still shown to those who visit the ancient
town of St. Gall. (James Joyce, “Ireland, Island of Saints and Sages”, 1907)