The Loss of the Native Language and Post-Imperial Narratives

This article addresses the issue of language in colonial and post-colonial contexts and its role in delineating authentic features of national identity. The first part tackles African and Irish theorists such as Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Douglas Hyde whose views of clinging to the native tongue promote the politics of an essentialist identity. According to them, the loss of the native language brings about feelings of inferiority and estrangement which serve only to empower the colonizer. The article, then, proceeds to more tolerant writers who believe in the colonizer’s share in the making of the present of the colonized and favor hybrid identities. For them, it is impossible to reduce the polyvocality of the moment into the too-familiar, too-reassuring fictions of the old days. Finally, this work focuses on the Irish context through Yeats and Joyce who radically transform the idea of the nation theorizing for style as an agent of redemption from colonial artistic and political confines. Their cosmopolitan techniques allow the breakthrough of a new context, a post-imperial writing. The loss of the native language, therefore, opens alternative artistic paths to experiment with the language of the colonizer fostering a modern, cosmopolitan and continuously changing “national” identity. Keywords: National identity, native language, essentialist, hybrid, experimentation, post-imperial

Language Revival and Educational Reform in Ireland and Hungary: Douglas Hyde, Patrick Pearse, Arthur Griffith

Patrick Pearse’s editorial in the journal of the Gaelic League, An Claidheamh Soluis, is the starting point of this essay that explores Irish perceptions of the Hungarian language question as it panned out during the early nineteenth century. Arthur Griffith’s The Resurrection of Hungary: A Parallel for Ireland (1904), to which Pearse refers in his editorial, is the focal point of the discussion, with the pamphlet’s/book’s reference to Count István Széchenyi’s offer of his one-year land revenue to further the cause of the Hungarian language at the Hungarian Diet of Pozsony (present-day Bratislava) in 1825. Széchenyi’s aspirations are examined in the essay in comparison with the ideals of Baron József Eötvös, Minister of Religious and Educational Affairs (1848; 1867–71), in order to indicate the strong connection that existed between the question of language use and religious and educational matters in Hungary. Similar issues were discussed in Ireland during the nineteenth century, providing further points of reference between Ireland and Hungary in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century. Finally, the debate between language revivalists and reformists is studied in some detail, comparing the case of Hungary between the 1790s and the 1840s with that of Ireland between the 1890s and the 1920s.

Douglas Hyde (1860–1949): The Adolescent Behind the Diarist

This chapter examines the diaristic and linguistic development of Douglas Hyde through an examination of his early journals. As the founding President of the Gaelic League, first Professor of Modern Irish in UCD and first President of an independent Irish state, Hyde’s linguistic ideas were integral to his literary and cultural nationalism. His inner thoughts and ideas, his linguistic development and his coming of age in Co. Roscommon are articulated through thirteen diaries housed in the National Library of Ireland. Personal, affective encounters with the Irish language are shown to be an integral part of his personal and political self-development, as Irish language becomes the written mode of both self-expression and self-creation. Hyde’s diaries use phonetic, anglicised transcriptions to chart his early encounters with Irish and experiments in writing in the language. Intriguingly, Hyde’s early writing in Irish utilises diacritical marks from French, suggesting how available textual models affect literacy acquisition when there is little access to works written in the language under study.

Celtic Revival

The Celtic Revival was a late-nineteenth-century resurgence of interest in Celtic history, languages and myths that crossed through many disciplines, most notably cultural anthropology, art history and literature. The Celtic Revival was most influential in Ireland, where it inspired the formation of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA; Cumann Lúthchleas Gael) in 1884, which was dedicated to the recovery of ancient Irish sports. In 1893, Douglas Hyde (1860–1949) helped to establish the Gaelic League (Conradh na Gaeilge) in order to preserve the Irish language and promote Irish culture. The Celtic Revival is also associated with the Irish Literary Revival. The latter, which covers the renaissance of Irish literature and poetry that took place in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is also referred to as the ‘Celtic Twilight’, a term borrowed from the title of William Butler Yeats’s (1865–1939) 1893 volume. Inspired by the poetry of Thomas Moore (1478–1535), James Clarence Mangan (1803–1849) and Samuel Ferguson (1810–1886), as well as by the folktales published by Standish James O’Grady (1869–1928), Yeats established both the Irish Literary Society in London and the National Literary Society in Dublin in 1892. In 1899, Yeats established the Irish Literary Theatre, which would become the Irish National Theatre Society at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1904.

Twisting in the Wind

Without a strong native tradition of drama, theatre in the Irish language, initially associated with the Gaelic League, has been slow to develop and has suffered from many frustrations and setbacks. One of the landmark early productions wasCasadh an tSúgáinby the League’s founder Douglas Hyde (1901). The Abbey did not do much initially to foster Irish-language theatre, which has functioned intermittently in Dublin, with An Comhar Drámaíochta in the 1920s and An Damer, which produced Máiréad Ní Ghráda’sAn Triail(1964). More central to the tradition has been An Taibhdhearc, established in Galway in 1928, which continues to be Ireland only dedicated Irish-language theatre. While there have been outstanding plays in Irish produced in the Abbey, the future of the tradition seems to depend more on small adventurous companies such as Fíbín, Setanta, and the Belfast-based Aisling Ghéar.