scholarly journals Cúchulain in the General Post Office: Gaelic revival, Irish rising

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joep Leerssen
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Nationalism ◽  
Post Office ◽  
Irish Nationalism ◽  
Consciousness Raising ◽  
Irish Language ◽  
Irish History ◽  
Easter Rising ◽  
Restricted Number

This article looks at the importance of the Gaelic language for the development of Irish nationalism in the decades leading up to, and following the Easter Rising of 1916. This importance was mainly symbolical: the Irish language was used mainly by revivalist activists, in a restricted number of functional registers, and largely as an enabling platform of other consciousness-raising activities. It is suggested, however, that such a symbolical instrumentalisation is by no means inconsequential and should be analysed as an important feature of cultural nationalism, not only in Irish history.

Capturing the Trenches of Language: World War One, the Irish Language and the Gaelic League

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 382-398
Author(s):  
Brian Ó Conchubhair
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
Critical Element ◽  
World War ◽  
Physical Force ◽  
Irish Nationalism ◽  
Irish Language ◽  
Revolutionary Era ◽  
Irish History ◽  
Early Twentieth Century

While the dominant narrative of Irish nationalism occludes Irish-speakers’ participation in the First World War, the war is a key component of the story of the Irish language in the early twentieth century and is the critical element in understanding Conradh na Gaeilge/the Gaelic League's politicization, radicalization and ultimate demise as one of the most powerful forces in Irish cultural politics. Controversies concerning recruitment and conscription played critical roles in shaping public attitudes within Irish-language discourse. The war not only created the conditions for the League's radicalization but also triggered Douglas Hyde's departure as president in 1915. The Great War politicized the Gaelic League and the British reaction to the Rising helped to establish the relationship between physical force nationalism and the Irish language that has become a familiar feature of the cultural memory of the revolutionary era in early twentieth-century Irish history.

‘If you shoulder a rifle […] let it be for Ireland’: James Connolly's War on War

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 364-381
Author(s):  
Margot Gayle Backus ◽  
Spurgeon Thompson
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
The Body ◽  
Party Leader ◽  
Irish Nationalism ◽  
British Imperialism ◽  
Communications Networks ◽  
Easter Rising ◽  
Trade Unionist ◽  
The One ◽  
National Governments

As virtually all Europe's major socialist parties re-aligned with their own national governments with the outbreak of World War I, Irish socialist and trade unionist James Connolly found himself internationally isolated by his vociferous opposition to the war. Within Ireland, however, Connolly's energetic and relentless calls to interrupt the imperial transportation and communications networks on which the ‘carnival of murder’ in Europe relied had the converse effect, drawing him into alignment with certain strains of Irish nationalism. Connolly and other socialist republican stalwarts like Helena Molony and Michael Mallin made common cause with advanced Irish nationalism, the one other constituency unamenable to fighting for England under any circumstances. This centripetal gathering together of two minority constituencies – both intrinsically opposed, if not to the war itself, certainly to Irish Party leader John Redmond's offering up of the Irish Volunteers as British cannon fodder – accounts for the “remarkably diverse” social and ideological character of the small executive body responsible for the planning of the Easter Rising: the Irish Republican Brotherhood's military council. In effect, the ideological composition of the body that planned the Easter Rising was shaped by the war's systematic diversion of all individuals and ideologies that could be co-opted by British imperialism through any possible argument or material inducement. Although the majority of those who participated in the Rising did not share Connolly's anti-war, pro-socialist agenda, the Easter 1916 Uprising can nonetheless be understood as, among other things, a near letter-perfect instantiation of Connolly's most steadfast principle: that it was the responsibility of every European socialist to throw onto the gears of the imperialist war machine every wrench on which they could lay their hands.

A gallant little ‘tírín’: the Welsh influence on Irish cultural nationalism

2014 ◽  
Vol 39 (153) ◽  
pp. 58-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caoimhín De Barra
Keyword(s):  
Deep Understanding ◽  
Traditional Culture ◽  
Cultural Nationalism ◽  
Cultural Revival ◽  
Irish Language ◽  
The People ◽  
Welsh Language ◽  
Culture And Language

Throughout the Irish cultural revival of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Wales was held up as an example by some Irish nationalists of how a nation could revive its traditional culture and language. These writers told their audience of the heroic deeds of the Welsh in restoring their language to show Irish language revivalists that their task was not impossible. The Welsh example was studied by enthusiasts to see what steps were needed to improve the position of Irish. Organisations such as the Society for the Preservation of the Irish Language (S.P.I.L.) and the Gaelic League noted with envy the levels of literacy among Welsh speakers. Revivalists believed that literacy had prevented Welsh from disappearing, and they hoped to boost literacy rates in Irish to save that language. They noted how successful the eisteddfodau were in instilling pride among the Welsh people in their culture. Accordingly, members of the Gaelic League established the Oireachtas to encourage the people of Ireland to celebrate their own distinctive characteristics. Yet while the example of the Welsh language was regularly discussed, this did not reflect a deep understanding of linguistic developments in Wales.

The Hunger-Strike of the Lord Mayor of Cork, 1920: Irish, English and Vatican Attitudes

1989 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 385-399
Author(s):  
Stuart Mews
Keyword(s):  
Hunger Strike ◽  
Irish Nationalism ◽  
City Hall ◽  
New Name ◽  
Easter Rising ◽  
Irish People ◽  
Irish Republic ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City ◽  
Active Commitment

On 25 October 1920, a new name was added to the martyrology of Irish nationalism. On that date, the Lord Mayor of Cork, Alderman Terence MacSwiney, died in Brixton prison after a hunger-strike which had lasted 74 days. He had held office for little more than six months, his predecessor having been roused from sleep and shot, most Irish people believed, by plain clothed policemen. MacSwiney had succeeded not only to the symbolic positions of head of the municipality and titular chief magistrate, but also the less decorative but potentially more deadly positions of president of the Cork branch of Sinn Fein and commandant of the First Cork Brigade of the Irish Volunteers. Brought up in the full flood of the Catholic spiritual and Gaelic cultural revivals, MacSwiney had a long record of active commitment to the struggle for Irish independence. He had been imprisoned by the British in 1916 in the aftermath of Dublin’s Easter Rising which he had watched from Cork in an agony of indecision, developing in one English historian’s view ‘a guilt complex which he was later to expiate in the grimmest possible way’. In August 1920, only days after the introduction of courts martial to replace civilian courts in Ireland, he was arrested in the City Hall, while presiding over a meeting of the Brigade Council. Proclaiming his allegiance to the Irish Republic, the Lord Mayor challenged the right of the British Army to detain him, and immediately commenced a hunger-strike.

Irish History as a Testing Ground for Sociological Theory: Hechter's Internal Colonialism and Hutchinson's Cultural Nationalism

1994 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 128-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Murray
Keyword(s):  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Cultural Nationalism ◽  
Historical Sociology ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Internal Colonialism ◽  
Irish History ◽  
Testing Ground ◽  
Irish Case

In the field of historical sociology Ireland has served as a case study testing ground for Hechter's internal colonialism and for Hutchinson's cultural nationalism. This paper reviews the ways in which these theories were tested on the Irish case. The coherence of internal colonialism is called into question by fundamental discrepancies between the original and the revisited versions of the model. In the testing of cultural nationalism the procedures followed suffer from a circularity that sees Irish historical evidence sifted to highlight what the theory postulates before the extent to which the theory fits the evidence is comparatively assessed. The manner in which these theories were tested lends support to Goldthorpe's criticisms of the methodology of ‘grand historical sociology’.

The Literary Afterlives of Roger Casement, 1899-2016

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Garden
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Swimming Pool ◽  
Sexual Life ◽  
Love Affair ◽  
British Imperialism ◽  
Medbh Mcguckian ◽  
Irish History ◽  
Easter Rising ◽  
Heart Of Darkness ◽  
Cultural Texts

This groundbreaking study explores the literary afterlives of Ireland’s most enigmatic, shape-shifting and controversial son: Roger Casement. A seminal human rights activist, a key figure in the struggle for Irish independence, a traitor to British imperialism and an enthusiastic recorder of a sexual life lived in the shadows, Casement has endured as a symbol of ambivalence and multiplicity. Casement can be found in the most curious of places: from the imperial horrors of Heart of Darkness (1899) to the gay club culture of 1980s London in Alan Hollinghurst’s The Swimming-Pool Library (1998); from George Bernard Shaw’s play Saint Joan (1923) to a love affair between spies in Elizabeth Bowen’s The Heat of the Day (1948); from the post-Easter Rising elegies of Eva Gore-Booth and Alice Milligan to the beguiling, opaque poetry of Medbh McGuckian. Drawing upon a variety of literary and cultural texts, alongside significant archival research, this book establishes dialogues between modernist and contemporary works to argue that Casement’s ghost animates issues of historical pertinence and pressing contemporary relevance. It positions Casement as a vital and fascinating figure in the compromised and contradictory terrain of Anglo-Irish history.

Irish Literary Revival

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.

Two Traditions of Translating Early Irish Literature

Target ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Tymoczko
Keyword(s):  
Irish Literature ◽  
Translation System ◽  
Irish Nationalism ◽  
Irish Language

Abstract In the translation of early Irish materials into English there are two translation traditions, a scholarly and a literary one, diverging markedly in their practices and norms. The effects of the Macpherson controversy, Irish nationalism, and the Irish language movement in defining and polarizing these translation traditions are explored. In historical poetics, analysis must allow for the ways in which historical circumstances may produce a translation system, internally differentiated itself, such that investigation of a part of the translation system will not necessarily be predictive or reflective of the whole.

Emigrants and Exiles: Irish Cultures and Irish Emigration to North America, 1790- 1922.

1980 ◽  
Vol 22 (86) ◽  
pp. 97-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kerby A Miller ◽  
Bruce Boling ◽  
David N Doyle
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Irish Nationalism ◽  
Migratory Response ◽  
Irish History ◽  
Personal Involvement ◽  
American Nationalism ◽  
Irish Identity ◽  
Irish Question ◽  
Economic Modernization

From 1740–1922, as many as seven million people emigrated from Ireland to North America. Arguably, if there are any patterns in modern Irish history, a cultural analysis of this vast flow may help to reveal them. For while the Irish question is usually defined in Anglo/Irish terms (those of conflict) it has more universal import as the adjustment of Irish identity and culture, both personal and national, to the demands of the modern industrialising world. Emigration afforded one such response; Irish nationalism another; Irish American nationalism linked the two. More humans were directly and articulately involved in the migratory response than in the nationalist, both cumulatively over time and in the degree of freely active personal involvement. If scholars such as Robert Kennedy, Cormac Ó Gráda and others have studied emigration in terms of Ireland’s economic modernization, we would suggest that it may be studied culturally as a revealing cross-section of Ireland’s attendant psychic modernisation.

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