Irish Literary Heritage: Revival, Themes, and Modern Voices
Literary Connections Across the British Isles
Authors from the British Isles or those with ancestral ties to Ireland, Scotland, or Wales are often considered part of a shared literary tradition.
Irish Literature
The Irish Literary Revival
The Irish Literary Revival, led by William Butler Yeats, fostered national independence and political opposition by creating a distinctive vocabulary, particularly in drama and poetry.
Working-Class Voices and Innovative Themes
- There were two significant working-class literary voices in Ireland: Patrick MacGill and Robert Tressell, whose style is characterized as ‘proletarian modernism.’
- Irish political ruptures with England led to innovative elements such as absurdist fables, political allegories, Gothic romances, metafictions, peasant tales, and versions of ‘the Irish story.’ The most important figures were Samuel Beckett and Flann O’Brien.
The ‘Big House’ Novel Tradition
- In 19th-century Irish literature, there was a tradition of the ‘Big House’ novel, whose settings are the country houses and estates of the Anglo-Irish Protestant landowning class.
- Elizabeth Bowen’s The Last September (1929) depicts the Irish middle class, IRA gunmen, British Army troops, and the beleaguered Anglo-Irish. Its style features syntactical inversions, contortions, and double negatives, reflecting the complexities of the Irish social world during the anti-colonial struggle.
- Molly Keane uses comedy and grotesque satire in her Big House novel, Two Days in Aragon (1941). Other writers were influenced by their relationship with state authority, sometimes facing censorship.
Prominent Irish Novelists and Short Story Writers
- Edna O’Brien is a prominent and controversial novelist and short-story writer. Her trilogy depicts the sexual discovery of young girls and their victimization by experienced men.
- John McGahern’s The Dark (1965) was banned by the Irish Censorship Board. He left the country for a decade. Now he has the status of one of Ireland’s leading novelists and is also renowned for his excellent short stories.
- William Trevor is a master of the short story. The Ballroom of Romance depicts the anomie and claustrophobia of small-town, rural Ireland. He also wrote historical novels and politically charged short stories in the 1980s.
Late 20th-Century Transformations in Ireland
In the last decades of the 20th century, Ireland experienced significant changes in its society, economy, and culture:
- The Minister for Justice revealed the extent of censorship.
- New publishing houses were established.
- The government introduced measures exempting artists and writers from taxes on their work.
- The Arts Council established Aosdána (‘People of the Arts’), offering a governmental stipend to some writers.
- An economic boom, fueled by tax breaks for multinational companies and high-tech industry.
Societal Consequences and Cultural Shifts
Some of the consequences of these transformations were:
- The revolution in technology.
- Mass communications and travel.
- The rise of a distinct ‘youth culture.’
- Increased availability of secondary and tertiary-level education.
Modern Irish Society and Its Literary Reflections
- However, Irish society was analyzed through a ‘two-civilization’ model, distinguishing between modernizers and traditionalists.
- Writers who reflected this new Ireland include Dermot Bolger, Roddy Doyle, and John Banville.