Fictions of the Irish Literary Revival: A Changeling Art, and: Sean O'Faolain's Irish Vision, and: Kate O'Brien: A Literary Portrait (review)

Since David Lloyd's pioneering studies some fifteen years ago, the postcolonial dimension of Beckett's work has received little sustained attention in critical scholarship. This essay contributes to a further evaluation of Beckett's engagement with postcoloniality by examining the ways in which Beckett's critique of the object emerges from a broader critique of postcolonial nationalism. Its discussion focuses particularly on "Recent Irish Poetry" and the "German Letter" as a means of illustrating the ways in which Beckett's impatience with the Irish Literary Revival and its insistence on nationalist representation coincides with the more far-reaching assault on language sketched for Kaun. Proceeding then to , the essay considers how the novel's relentless critique of subject and anti-subject draws much of its energy from Beckett's searching analysis of postcolonial representation.

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Strangers in the house: reconfiguring the borders of national and cultural identities in contemporary Irish theatre

European Review ◽

10.1017/s106279870100028x ◽

2001 ◽

Vol 9 (3) ◽

pp. 293-303 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

BRIAN SINGLETON

Keyword(s):

Cultural Identities ◽

Future Health ◽

Irish Theatre ◽

Current State ◽

The Future ◽

Literary Revival ◽

Dramatic Writing ◽

Irish Literary Revival

The Irish literary revival at the beginning of the last century established the concept of ‘house’ as a symbol of ‘nation’ in dramatic writing. Strangers to the house thus took on the mantle of imperialist forces whose colonial project, practices and values had to be resisted and expelled. The allegorical situations of houses and strangers in theatre foreshadowed revolution and eventual independence for the country decades later. Contemporary Irish playwrights continue to use the house/stranger, familiar/foreign dichotomies as templates for their exploration of the current state of the ‘nation’, but they are also beginning to explore the idea that ‘strangeness’ might be a condition that should be embraced to ensure the future health of that nation.

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Yeats, the Irish Literary Revival and the Politics of Print

Béaloideas ◽

10.2307/20520811 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 70 ◽

pp. 248

Author(s):

Maureen Murphy ◽

Yug Mohit Chaudhry

Keyword(s):

Literary Revival ◽

Irish Literary Revival

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Bax and the ‘Celtic North’

Journal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland ◽

10.35561/jsmi08124 ◽

2013 ◽

pp. 51-87

Author(s):

Aidan J. Thomson

Keyword(s):

Anglo Saxon ◽

The South ◽

Musical Engagement ◽

Literary Revival ◽

Irish Literary Revival ◽

Celtic Mythology ◽

Western Ireland ◽

Arnold Bax ◽

North Western

Scholars of Arnold Bax have long acknowledged the influence of the Irish Literary Revival on the composer’s compositional output up to about 1920, of Sibelius from the late 1920s onwards, and of the continuity of styles between these two periods. In this article I argue that this continuity relies on what Bax draws from early Yeats, which is less Celtic mythology or folklore than a particular way of imagining nature; that Bax’s use as a compositional stimulus of what he called the ‘Celtic North’ (essentially the landscapes of western Ireland and north-western Scotland) had parallels in the literature and art of 1920s Ireland; and that the ‘Celtic North’ offers a means of critiquing inter-war English pastoralism, which has traditionally been associated with what Alun Howkins, after Hilaire Belloc, has called the ‘South Country’. Bax thus offers a musical engagement with nature that is essentially dystopian, sublime and (within the discourse of British pastoralism) non-Anglo Saxon.

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Irish Literary Revival

Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism ◽

10.4324/9781135000356-rem1480-1 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Jane Hu

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Irish Literature ◽

Irish Nationalism ◽

Irish Language ◽

Language And Culture ◽

Literary Movement ◽

Intellectual Engagement ◽

Literary Revival ◽

Irish Literary Revival ◽

Literary Renaissance

The Irish Literary Revival — also known as the ‘Irish Literary Renaissance’ or ‘The Celtic Twilight’ — describes a movement of increased literary and intellectual engagement in Ireland starting in the 1890s and occurring into the early twentieth century. As a literary movement, the Irish Literary Revival was deeply engaged in a renewed interest in Ireland’s Gaelic heritage as well as the growth of Irish nationalism during the nineteenth century. Indeed, the Irish Literary Revival was only a part — though a significant one — of a more general national movement called the ‘Gaelic Revival’, which engaged in Irish heritage on the intellectual, athletic, linguistic, and political levels. For instance, the Literary Revival coincided with the formation of the Gaelic League in 1893, which sought to revive interest in Irish language and culture more broadly. The Irish Literary Revival is also sometimes referred to as the Anglo-Irish Literary Revival because it revitalized Irish literature not through the Irish language, but in English. In addition, many of its leading members were part of the Anglo-Irish Protestant class. As a movement, the Irish Literary Revival is difficult to encapsulate, partly because of the range and reach of its various members, and also because the work that emerged from it was often experimental and widely diverse in focus, style, and genre.

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