DOCSLIB.ORG

Irish Divorce/Joyce's

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Irish Divorce/Joyce's Irish Divorce/Joyce’s Ulysses Irish Divorce/ Joyce’s Ulysses Peter Kuch Peter Kuch University of Otago Dunedin, New Zealand ISBN 978-1-349-95187-1 ISBN 978-1-137-57186-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-57186-1 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017939123 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institu- tional affiliations. Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Nature America Inc. The registered company address is: 1 New York Plaza, New York, NY 10004, U.S.A. “Ignorantia juris non excusat.” “Every man is presumed to know the law.” For Declan PREFACE This book offers a revisionist reading of Joyce’s Ulysses by examining Irish attitudes to marriage and the wide-ranging English, Irish, American, and French debates about divorce that were conducted between 1904, when Joyce’s novel of adultery is set, and 1922, when it was published. It draws attention to an Irish practice that, even though it was known at the time, has since disappeared from the critical, historical, and legal literature about Ulysses and about Irish divorce. It is well known that Joyce was an avid reader of newspapers, the most common and popular source of information about divorce.1 1 Garry Leonard, Advertising and Commodity Culture in Joyce (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998); Barbara Leckie, Culture and Adultery: The Novel, the Newspaper and the Law 1857–1914 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999); Declan Kiberd, “Ulysses, Newspapers and Modernism,” in Irish Classics (London: Granta Books, 2000), 463–81; Barbara Leckie, “The Simple Case of Adultery,” James Joyce Quarterly 40, no. 4 (2003): 729–52; Katherine Mullin, James Joyce, Sexuality and Social Purity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); James A. Reppke, “Journalist Joyce: A Portrait,” James Joyce Quarterly 45, nos. 3–4 (2008): 459–68; R. Brandon Kershner, The Culture of Joyce’s “Ulysses” (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Jennifer Wicke, “Modernity Must Advertise: Aura, Desire, and Decolonization in Joyce,” James Joyce Quarterly 50, nos. 1–2 (2012–2013): 203–21; Margot Backus, Scandal Work: James Joyce, the New Journalism, and the Home Rule Newspaper Wars (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013). ix x PREFACE It is also well known that Joyce was fascinated by accounts of divorce hearings that appeared almost daily in the Irish press from Dilke (1886) to Parnell (1890), to the establishment of the Free State in 1922,2 and with increasing frequency in the English press between the 1857 Act to Amend the Law Relating to Divorce and Matrimonial Causes in England and the 1926 Judicial Proceedings (Regulation of Reports) Act, which enforced a measure of restraint.3 What has not been realized is that the dual time-scheme of Ulysses, set in 1904 but written while Ireland was violently renegotiating its relationship to Empire, provided Joyce with a stance from which to interrogate ways in which sometimes rival and sometimes collusive Imperial and Ecclesiastical hegemonies forged the Edwardian Irish social imaginary. What unwit- tingly resulted from this complex, shifting contestation for control of the Irish mind was the provision of a space that gave Irish litigants, from 1858 to 1922, limited access to the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division of the King’s Bench, which sat only in London. Consequently, no one has investigated the extent to which Bloom’s “Divorce, not now” and Molly’s “suppose I divorced him” are realistic possibilities rather than passing fantasies (17.2202; 18.846), and no one has investigated the extent to which Bloom’s and Molly’s thoughts about divorce, thoughts that find expression in the early hours of 17 June 1904, arise from and color all eighteen episodes of Ulysses. Irish Divorce / Joyce’s “Ulysses” demonstrates that divorce was a realis- tic option for the Blooms—whether whim, fantasy, wish, or conviction— following Molly’s affair with Hugh Boylan. It does so, in an attempt to avoid presentism,4 by cross-referencing the fifty-fourth edition of Every Man’s Own Lawyer (1919) Joyce is known to have possessed with contemporary Ecclesiastical and Parliamentary debates, public 2 Diarmaid Ferriter, Occasions of Sin: Sex and Society in Modern Ireland (London: Profile Books, 2009), 105–6; Peter Martin, Censorship in the Two Irelands, 1922– 1939 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2006), 32. 3 See Gail Savage, “Erotic Stories and Public Decency: Newspaper Reporting of Divorce Proceedings in England,” The Historical Journal 41, no. 2 (1998): 511– 28. The Judicial Proceedings Act can be accessed at http://bailii.austlii.edu.au/ uk/legis/num_act/1926/ukpga_19260061_en.html. 4 Martin Jay, “Historical Explanation and the Event: Reflections on the Limits of Contextualization,” New Literary History 42 (2011): 557–71. PREFACE xi enquiries, relevant legal texts, and the 1912 Royal Commission on divorce. It also cross-references 1,500 divorce cases reported in various detail in the Irish and English newspapers that Joyce read whenever he could get access to copies with some 850 Divorce Court Minutes depos- ited in the National Archives in London, particularly those that relate to Irish pleas of the period. The book further engages with a rich vein of Joyce scholarship revealed by Richard Brown’s James Joyce and Sexuality (1985), Joseph Valente’s James Joyce and the Problem of Justice: Negotiating Sexual and Colonial Difference (1988), Vicki Mahaffey’s Reauthorizing Joyce (1988), Marian Eide’s Ethical Joyce (2002), Andrew Gibson’s Joyce’s Revenge (2002), Katherine Mullin’s James Joyce, Sexuality and Social Purity (2003), and Luca Crispi’s Joyce’s Creative Process and the Construction of Characters in “Ulysses”: Becoming the Blooms (2015). It concludes that the Blooms’ commitment to one another is more provisional than has previously been realized and that the engorged full stop at the end of “Ithaca” and Molly’s final “Yes.” represent temporary accommodations rather than forgiveness, qualified commitment, or separa- tion. And it maps several of the paths by which Bloom and Molly become interpellated by the heuristic and legal discourses associated with divorce. Irish Divorce / Joyce’s “Ulysses” is not a book about Joyce’s attitude or attitudes to divorce or about divorce in Joyce’s corpus, as relevant as some critics believe Exiles and Giacomo Joyce are to understanding Bloom’s situation. Nor is it a book about divorce in Finnegans Wake, or what might happen to the Blooms after 16 June 1904. Instead, it proposes that known Irish access to the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division of the King’s Bench, the prominence given to divorce in Edwardian print culture, and the extent to which divorce was being expunged from the Irish social imaginary even while Ulysses was being written challenged Joyce to reconfigure his domestic odyssey as a novel of adultery by interrogating ways in which competing narratives, multiple voices, and self-reflexivity were played off against one another within a patriarchal legal discourse about divorce that had been and was being widely discussed in England, Ireland, and France (though not Italy5) throughout the first two decades of the twentieth century. 5 Mark Seymour, Debating Divorce in Italy: Marriage and the Making of Modern Italians (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). xii PREFACE As he was writing Ulysses, Joyce came to realize that Irish recourse to the English jurisdiction for decrees absolute provided him with a space to dramatize one way of subverting the power of “the imperial British state” (utilizing the state’sdefinition of “domicile” against itself) and the “holy Roman catholic and apostolic church” (obtaining a decree absolute) even while it drew attention to what was actually happening in Edwardian Ireland (the “Ireland” of “odd jobs”) (1.641–44). Finally, Irish Divorce / Joyce’s “Ulysses” raises the provocative and timely questions: why was Irish recourse to the English divorce court expunged from Joyce criticism, from Irish history, and from the Irish social imaginary between 1922 and 1986, and what does this tell us about the state and the nation? ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Much of this book has been written in what Edmund calls “Grandpa’s think-house,” and much of it has been read of an evening to Liz on the “think-house” porch. I am very grateful for her love and support and for the love and encouragement of my three children, Erin, Anna, and Declan, and my grandson, Edmund. The research, conducted in England, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand, was facilitated by a sabba- tical leave granted by the University of Otago and made possible by the generosity of the Eamon Cleary Trust.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Field Day Revisited (II): an Interview with Declan Kiberd1
    Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies 33.2 September 2007: 203-35 Field Day Revisited (II): An Interview with Declan Kiberd1 Yu-chen Lin National Sun Yat-sen University Abstract Intended to address the colonial crisis in Northern Ireland, the Field Day Theatre Company was one of the most influential, albeit controversial, cultural forces in Ireland in the 1980’s. The central idea for the company was a touring theatre group pivoting around Brian Friel; publications, for which Seamus Deane was responsible, were also included in its agenda. As such it was greeted by advocates as a major decolonizing project harking back to the Irish Revivals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Its detractors, however, saw it as a reactionary entity intent on reactivating the same tired old “Irish Question.” Other than these harsh critiques, Field Day had to deal with internal divisions, which led to Friel’s resignation in 1994 and the termination of theatre productions in 1998. Meanwhile, Seamus Deane persevered with the publication enterprise under the company imprint, and planned to revive Field Day in Dublin. The general consensus, however, is that Field Day no longer exists. In view of this discrepancy, I interviewed Seamus Deane and Declan Kiberd to track the company’s present operation and attempt to negotiate among the diverse interpretations of Field Day. In Part One of this transcription, Seamus Deane provides an insider’s view of the aspirations, operation, and dilemma of Field Day, past and present. By contrast, Declan Kiberd in Part Two reconfigures Field Day as both a regional and an international movement which anticipated the peace process beginning in the mid-1990’s, and also the general ethos of self-confidence in Ireland today.
    [Show full text]
  • Ulysses and Us
    Ulysses and Us The Art of Everyday Living declan kiberd First published in 2009 by Faber and Faber Ltd Bloomsbury House 74–77 Great Russell Street London wc1b 3da Typeset by Faber and Faber Ltd Printed in England by CPI Mackays, Chatham All rights reserved © Declan Kiberd, 2009 The right of Declan Kiberd to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library isbn 978–0–571–24254–2 2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1 In memory of John McGahern ‘Níl ann ach lá dár saol’ Contents Acknowledgements ix Note on the Text xi How Ulysses Didn’t Change Our Lives 3 How It Might Still Do So 16 Paralysis, Self-Help and Revival 32 1 Waking 41 10 Wandering 153 2 Learning 53 11 Singing 168 3 Thinking 64 12 Drinking 181 4 Walking 77 13 Ogling 193 5 Praying 89 14 Birthing 206 6 Dying 100 15 Dreaming 222 7 Reporting 113 16 Parenting 237 8 Eating 124 17 Teaching 248 9 Reading 137 18 Loving 260 Ordinary People’s Odysseys 277 Old Testaments and New 296 Depression and After: Dante’s Comedy 313 Shakespeare, Hamlet and Company 331 Conclusion: The Long Day Fades 347 Notes 359 Index 381 vii Acknowledgements For almost thirty years the students of University College Dublin have been teaching me about their famous fore- runner.
    [Show full text]
  • The IRISH Seminar 2021
    The IRISH Seminar 2021 Faculty Lead: Barry McCrea Format: Webinar* Please note that all times are listed in EST. Tuesday 8 June 9am Welcome & Introductions by Patrick Griffin & Barry McCrea 9.30am-10.30am Opening Roundtable: The State of Irish History Break Panel: Carole Holohan (Trinity College Dublin) 11.00am – 12.00pm Anne Dolan (Trinity College Dublin) Enda Delaney (University of Edinburgh) Ian McBride (Hertford College, Oxford) Moderator: Patrick Griffin (Notre Dame) 2-3pm Poetry Reading: Doireann Ní Gríofa Moderator: Brian Ó Conchubhair Wednesday 9 June Irish Studies from austerity to pandemic Editors of the Routledge International Handbook of Irish Studies (2021) in conversation with selected contributors. 9.00-9.15am Introduction with Renée Fox (University of California, Santa Cruz), Mike Cronin (Boston College) and Brian Ó Conchubhair (Notre Dame) 9.15-10.00am Eric Falci (University of California, Berkeley): Aesthetics of Irish poetry Sarah Townsend (University of New Mexico): Race in Ireland & Irish America. 10.00-10.15am Break 10.15-11.00am Claire Bracken (Union College): Gender and Irish Studies Nessa Cronin (NUI Galway): Environmentalities & the Anthropocene Maggie O'Neill (NUI Galway): The Ageing body in Irish Literature 11.00-11.15am Break 11.15-12.00pm Discussion and Q&A with panellists and participants Thursday 10 June Digital Humanities & Irish Studies 9.00-9.25 Beyond 2022 project overview. 9.25-10.00 Case Study 1: Medieval Ireland by Lynn Kigallon (Trinity College Dublin) 10.00-10.30 Break 10.30-11.00 Case Study 2: Eighteenth Century Ireland by Tim Murtagh (Trinity College Dublin) 11.00-11.15 Break 11.15-12.00 Discussion Friday 11 June Black Ireland Please note times for this seminar are subject to change** 9am Introduction by Chante Mouton Kinyon (Notre Dame) 9.15am Korey Garibaldi (Notre Dame) with Colm Toibin (Columbia): Culture and Racial Cosmopolitanism 10.15am Comfort break 10.45-11.45 Chante Mouton Kinyon with Colm Tóibín: Stranger in the Village 12:00-12.30 Discussion.
    [Show full text]
  • Irelands: Migration, Media, and Locality in Modern Day Dublin
    Imagining Irelands: Migration, Media, and Locality in Modern Day Dublin by Aaron Christopher Thornburg Department of Cultural Anthropology Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Naomi Quinn, Supervisor ___________________________ Lee D. Baker ___________________________ Katherine P. Ewing ___________________________ John L. Jackson, Jr. ___________________________ Suzanne Shanahan Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Cultural Anthropology in the Graduate School of Duke University 2011 ABSTRACT Imagining Irelands: Migration, Media, and Locality in Modern Day Dublin by Aaron Christopher Thornburg Department of Cultural Anthropology Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Naomi Quinn, Supervisor ___________________________ Lee D. Baker ___________________________ Katherine P. Ewing ___________________________ John L. Jackson, Jr. ___________________________ Suzanne Shanahan An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Cultural Anthropology in the Graduate School of Duke University 2011 Copyright by Aaron Christopher Thornburg 2011 Abstract This dissertation explores the place of Irish-Gaelic language (Gaeilge) television and film media in the lives of youths living in the urban greater Dublin metropolitan area in the Republic of Ireland. By many accounts, there has been a Gaeilge renaissance underway in recent times. The number of Gaeilge-medium primary and secondary schools (Gaelscoileanna) has grown throughout the 1990s and into the twenty-first century, the year 2003 saw the passage of the Official Languages Act (laying the groundwork to assure all public services would be made available in Gaeilge as well as English), and as of January 2007 Gaeilge has become a working language of the European Union.
    [Show full text]
  • In Joyce's Dubliners
    PARALYSIS AS “SPIRITUAL LIBERATION” IN JOYCE’S DUBLINERS Iven Lucas Heister, B.A. Thesis Prepared for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS May 2014 APPROVED: David Holdeman, Major Professor and Chair of the Department of English Masood Raja, Committee Member Stephanie Hawkins, Committee Member Mark Wardell, Dean of the Toulouse Graduate School Heister, Iven Lucas. Paralysis as “spiritual liberation” in Joyce’s Dubliners. Master of Arts (English), May 2014, 50 pp., references, 26 titles. In James Joyce criticism, and by implication Irish and modernist studies, the word paralysis has a very insular meaning. The word famously appears in the opening page of Dubliners, in “The Sisters,” which predated the collection’s 1914 publication by ten years, and in a letter to his publisher Grant Richards. The commonplace conception of the word is that it is a metaphor that emanates from the literal fact of the Reverend James Flynn’s physical condition the narrator recalls at the beginning of “The Sisters.” As a metaphor, paralysis has signified two immaterial, or spiritual, states: one individual or psychological and the other collective or social. The assumption is that as a collective and individual signifier, paralysis is the thing from which Ireland needs to be freed. Rather than relying on this received tradition of interpretation and assumptions about the term, I consider that paralysis is a two-sided term. I argue that paralysis is a problem and a solution and that sometimes what appears to be an escape from paralysis merely reinforces its negative manifestation. Paralysis cannot be avoided. Rather, it is something that should be engaged and used to redefine individual and social states.
    [Show full text]
  • Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies Speakers and Public Talks Series Fall 2015
    KEOUGH-NAUGHTON INSTITUTE FOR IRISH STUDIES SPEAKERS AND PUBLIC TALKS SERIES FALL 2015 Cycle Race – 126-Mile Championship of Ireland at Dundalk, 1953 © Irish Photo Archive www.irishphotoarchive.ie SEPTEMBER Tuesday, October 6th Saturday, November 14th 4:00 p.m. DeBartolo Performing Arts Center, Patricia 12:00 p.m. Annenberg Auditorium, Friday, September 4th George Decio Theatre Snite Museum of Art 4:00 p.m. Hesburgh Library, Reading: Barry McGovern Reads Joyce and Beckett Arts and Letters Saturday Scholars Series: Rare Books and Special Collections Barry McGovern, Actor, 1916: Screening the Irish Rebellion Seamus Heaney Memorial Lecture: Naughton Distinguished Visiting Faculty Fellow, Bríona Nic Dhiarmada, University of Notre Dame Heaney, Place and Property Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies Christopher Morash, Trinity College Dublin Friday, November 20th Friday, October 30th 9:00 a.m. Boston Marriott Copley Place, Salon C-D Friday, September 11th 3:30 p.m. 424 Flanner Hall Shamrock Series Event: 5:00 p.m. McKenna Hall Auditorium Joyce’s Empathy Irish in America: Immigration, Religion and Politics Hibernian Lecture: Blood Runs Green: Joseph Buttigieg, University of Notre Dame John McGreevy, Christopher Fox, Bríona Nic The Murder that Transfixed Gilded Age Chicago Dhiarmada, Patrick Griffin, University of Notre Dame; Gillian O’Brien, Liverpool John Moores University Michael Cronin, Boston College Co-sponsored by the Cushwa Center for the Study of NOVEMBER American Catholicism Thursday, November 5th DECEMBER Friday, September 18th Hesburgh Library, Rare Books and Special Collections 4:00 p.m. Hesburgh Library, Friday, December 4th 3:00 p.m. Ian McBride, King’s College London: Rare Books and Special Collections The Meaning of the Troubles 3:30 p.m.
    [Show full text]
  • RNL04-NLI Autumn 07.Indd
    NEWS Donal Cam O’Sullivan Beare, Number 29: Autumn 2007 courtesy of Maynooth College. A new book, The Irish on the move in Europe, 1600–1800, to be published Winter 2007 offers an illustrated overview of the travels, travails and triumphs of thousands of Irish migrants from all walks of life – students, soldiers, merchants, aristocrats, writers, entrepreneurs, composers and even beggars – who crossed the seas to ports such as Rouen, La Coruna and Ostende from the opening decades of the 1600s onwards. This phenomenon, born of political dislocation in Ireland and the lure of a better life in Europe, would continue until the era of the French Revolution. While people, ideas and goods had always moved between Ireland and Europe, the pace quickened after the Nine Years War between the Ulster earls and Queen Elizabeth had reached its climax. The earls’ defeat at Kinsale, and their departure overseas in 1607, unleashed the first wave of Irish migration, mostly of soldiers and their dependents, to Europe. Irish merchants were key figures in moving the migrating military to the Leabharlann Náisiúnta na hÉireann Continent. Their human cargo also included ecclesiastics in search of education and better opportunities. With native ingenuity and foreign patronage they established a National Library of Ireland network of colleges that eventually extended as far east as Wielun in Poland. Together, Irish soldiers, merchants and clergy left their mark on their host societies. In The Irish on the move in Europe, 1600–1800 we catch glimpses of the Irish migrants’ NUACHT achievements in war, trade, politics and religion; we also get a taste of the more mundane side of migrant life – the constant graft for survival, the casualties of war and social conflict, the sorry fate of the weak, the poor and the sick.
    [Show full text]
  • IRISH Seminar 2021 Final Schedule 27
    The IRISH Seminar 2021 Format: Webinar Zoom details will be shared with participants in advance **Please note that all times are EDT** Tuesday 8 June 9am Welcome & Introductions 9.15am-11am Opening Roundtable: The State of Irish History Moderator: Patrick Griffin (Notre Dame) Carole Holohan (Trinity College Dublin) Anne Dolan (Trinity College Dublin) Enda Delaney (University of Edinburgh) Ian McBride (Hertford College, Oxford) 2-3pm Public Event: Poetry Reading: Doireann Ní Gríofa Moderator: Brian Ó Conchubhair. Registration required. To register visit irishstudies.nd.edu/events Wednesday 9 June Irish Studies from austerity to pandemic Editors of the Routledge International Handbook of Irish Studies (2021) in conversation with selected contributors. Moderator: Brian Ó Conchubhair (Notre Dame) 9.00-9.15am Introduction: Renée Fox (UC Santa Cruz) Mike Cronin (Boston College) Brian Ó Conchubhair (Notre Dame) 9.15-10.00am Irish Studies in the non-Anglophone world Michael Cronin (Trinity College Dublin) Lyric narratives: the experimental aesthetics of Irish poetry Eric Falci (UC Berkeley) The "new Irish" neighborhood: race and succession in Ireland and Irish America Sarah Townsend (University of New Mexico) 10.00-10.15am Break 10.15-11.00am Gender and Irish Studies: 2008 to the present Claire Bracken (Union College) Environmentalities: speculative imaginaries of the Anthropocene Nessa Cronin (NUI Galway) Surplus to requirements? the ageing body in contemporary Irish writing Margaret O'Neill (NUI Galway) 11.00-11.15am Break 11.15-12.00am Discussion
    [Show full text]
  • RTPR463068 Queries Eo´In Flannery
    RTPR463068 Queries Eo´in Flannery Dear Author Please address all the numbered queries on this page which are clearly identified on the proof for your convenience. Thank you for your cooperation Q1 Please check the edit in this sentence ‘In his critique of Celtic Tiger Ireland, which is alluded to above. Thank You. Q2 Please check this sentence for sense ‘It is the past as Utopian resource’. Thank You. RTPR463068 Techset Composition Ltd, Salisbury, U.K. 2/11/2010 Textual Practice 00(0), 2010, 1–30 Eo´ in Flannery Ireland, Empire and Utopia: Irish postcolonial criticism and the Utopian impulse 5 10 This article is a response to Bill Ashcroft’s ‘Critical Utopias’, which appeared in this journal in 2007. In his earlier piece, Ashcroft offered a summary gen- 15 ealogy of the historical and literary historical links between Utopian Studies and Postcolonial Studies. While ‘Critical Utopias’ was a salutary intervention in this discursive dialogue between these two fields; by including the Irish case this article is designed as an extension to the geographical and historical limits of Ashcroft’s piece. Therefore, my article offers a substantial outline of some 20 recent work within Irish postcolonial studies and identifies the Utopian ener- gies that sustain such criticism. Positioning Irish postcolonial critiques as differential, yet conversant, engagements with the processes of late twentieth century Irish modernisation, the article treats the issues such as: the philoso- phical and political subtleties of Edmund Burke; the civic republicanism of 25 the United Irish movement; the imbricated political, cultural and social movements of the Irish Revival; the Socialist nationalism of James Connolly, as well as the recalcitrant local practices of counter-modern social formations mined by Connolly’s proto-subalternist historiography.
    [Show full text]
  • Edward Said and Irish Criticism Conor Mccarthy
    Edward Said and Irish Criticism Conor McCarthy Éire-Ireland, Volume 42:1&2, Earrach/Samhradh / Spring/Summer 2007, pp. 311-335 (Article) Published by Irish-American Cultural Institute DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/eir.2007.0021 For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/216058 Access provided at 19 Aug 2019 11:40 GMT from Maynooth University 12b-mccarthy-pp311-335 5/8/07 10:32 PM Page 311 Conor McCarthy Edward Said and Irish Criticism The work of Edward Said has been influential on a global scale, in a manner that very few scholars can ever hope to match. It can safely be asserted that no anti-imperialist writer since Frantz Fanon has successfully addressed so many audiences. This essay traces the response to Said’s work, including but not only his most famous work, Orientalism, in Irish criticism and debates over the last three decades. We will see, in the work of Said’s allies and emulators, and that of his detractors, a number of variations, turns, adaptations, and inflections on Said’s own books and essays. Surveying the archive of responses to Said is valuable in itself, but it also provides a barometer of Irish intellectual engagement with wider interna- tional geo-political issues and historical shifts. Beginnings: WRITING IRELAND Said published Orientalism in , but it is difficult to judge his influence in Irish debates for nearly a decade after. As Joe Cleary points out, the problematic of language, power, territory, and knowledge brooded over by the various initiatives of the Field Day Theatre Company—from Brian Friel’s Translations to Seamus Deane’s and Declan Kiberd’s Field Day pamphlets—is one that has been important for later more explicit postcolonial studies, but one can also recognize the similarities between this work and the matters 311 12b-mccarthy-pp311-335 5/8/07 10:32 PM Page 312 explored in Orientalism.1 Nevertheless, it was not until after Said himself had spoken at the Yeats Summer School in , at Kiberd’s invitation, that the issue began to be pressed with clarity and force.
    [Show full text]
  • Literature and Climate Change Syllabus
    TWENTIETH CENTURY IRISH LITERATURE Professor Malcolm Sen 266 Bartlett Hall [email protected] Office Hours: Mon. / Wed. 2 - 3pm or by appointment Description: Every reader and scholar of Irish literature is familiar with its extensive genealogy of nature writing, and a ‘sense of place’ found across a great variety of texts. While not unique to Ireland such a rich heritage has produced some of the most enduring and exciting literary and cultural narratives and criticisms. However, given our contemporary concerns with environmental issues, of which climate change is one, literary and cultural narratives need to be re-read and re-energized to help us find a language that speaks to current existential anxieties. This course offers an opportunity to read influential Irish authors from the 20th century through the lens of the environmental humanities. While we will learn of the socio- political conditions which have shaped Irish literature we will also be attentive to environmental questions that such literature often provoke and respond to. We require active participation in classroom Marine Phytoplankton Bloom off the coast of Ireland discussions and close Copyright: MODIS image from readings of texts and NASA's Aqua satellite documents for the course to be successful. As part of the Blended Learning Initiative of the Five Colleges this course utilises digital resources (such as podcasts and documentaries) as well as traditional lectures, classroom discussions and literary criticism. Assignments are similarly ‘blended’, in that students will have an opportunity to write critical assessments and essays, and publish digital reflections and record podcasts. (Students will receive guidance on such assignments.) An exciting aspect of these digital assignments is that they give students the opportunity to be a part of a growing digital resource on the environmental humanities at UMass.
    [Show full text]
  • 2015, Annual Report
    ABBEY THEatRE AMHARCLANN NA MAINISTREACH 2015 annual report 2015 ANNUAL REPORT CONTENTS About 5 Chairman’s Welcome 6 2005 – 2015 at the Abbey Theatre 14 Overview 29 The Abbey Theatre in Numbers 30 2015 on Our Stages: Director’s Report 32 Artistic Programme 38 Awards 52 Literary 54 Community and Education 56 Abbey Talks 60 Green-Light Programme 63 Archive 66 Handbook of the Irish Revival 67 Diversifying our Income Streams 68 Staff 72 Board of Directors 74 Supporters and Members 80 Gallery and Reviews 83 Directors’ Report and Financial Statements 101 3 ABBEY THEATRE ANNUAL REPORT 2015 As Ireland’s national theatre, our mission is to create a world class national theatre that actively engages with and reflects Irish society. The Abbey Theatre invests in, nurtures and promotes Irish theatre artists. We do this by placing the writer and theatre-maker at the heart of all that we do, commissioning and producing exciting new work and creating discourse and debate on the political, cultural and social issues of the day. Our aim is to present great theatre art in a national context so that the stories told on stage have a resonance with artists and audiences alike. The Abbey Theatre produces an ambitious annual programme of Irish and international theatre across our two stages and on tour in Ireland and internationally, having recently toured to Belfast, Edinburgh, London, New York and Sydney. The Abbey Theatre is committed to building the Irish theatre repertoire, through commissioning and producing new Irish writing, and re-imagining national and international classics in collaboration with leading contemporary talent.
    [Show full text]