ENGL 94513 - Irish Seminar: The Irish Revival and Its Aftermath

Institution:

University of Notre Dame

Subject:

English

Description:

The Irish Revival emerged out of the Parnell fiasco, after which a generation turned away from politics towards cultural activities. At this time, in Yeats's famous swords, Ireland was like 'wax' and cultural activists sought to impress their vision of a new Ireland on it. An extraordinary surge of cultural creativity ensued, embracing diverse movements - literary, dramatic, sporting, economic, linguistic... which are summarised under the heading the Irish Revival. These activities crossed class, party, and sectarian cleavages: they did not involve a clear-cut severance of [high-minded] culture from [grubby] politics. There was no conflict of civilisations - of a Protestant Anglo-Ireland representing high culture against a Catholic Gaelic middle class or peasant culture. Neither was the Revival a backward-looking, nostalgic, anti-modern and anti-materialist movement. Cultural self-belief was its bedrock issue: it underpinned the struggle for national independence, for economic advances, for cultural autonomy. The Revival sought an alternative route to modernity. The spirit of self-reliance was the spirit of Sinn Féin ['Ourselves'], and all these ostensibly different activities formed a common programme to generate a revitalised citizenship and redefined public sphere, a new civic nationalism based on republicanism. The period also witnessed a growing realisation that a Home Rule parliament on College Green meant little if there was not a distinctive Irish nationality to be nurtured by it. The Irish Revival was not just a dreamy drift of writers and mystics looking backwards to a Celtic past. It was a progressive movement, featuring self-help groups focussed on local modes of production - economic and cultural - the Gaelic Athletic Association, the Gaelic League, the Irish Literary Revival, the Abbey Theatre, the Co-Operative movement. They became the backbone of the emerging political movement. The Irish Revival offered a spectacular efflorescence of cultural and political energies. The generation born during or just after the Famine who came to maturity between 1880 and 1920 - including Michael Davitt, Michael Cusack, Douglas Hyde, Patrick Pearse, W. B. Yeats, J. M. Synge, Lady Gregory, James Joyce, Daniel Corkery - pioneered a remarkably experimental culture, that was much admired outside Ireland. The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s was modelled on the Revival's experiment with Hiberno-English speech. Ireland occupied a disproportionate space in the 1929 surrealist map of the world by Andre Frank. Seamus Heaney has commented that 'The Ireland I now inhabit is one that these Irish contemporaries have helped to imagine'.

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.nd.edu

Phone Number:

(574) 631-5000

Regional Accreditation:

North Central Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

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