University of Warwick institutional repository: http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of Warwick http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap/36345 This thesis is made available online and is protected by original copyright. Please scroll down to view the document itself. Please refer to the repository record for this item for information to help you to cite it. Our policy information is available from the repository home page. 'Narrating the Nation?': Post-Colonial Perspectives on Patrick Kavanagh's The Great Hunger (1942) and Brendan Kennelly's Cromwell (1983). John Kevin Mc Donagh. Submitted for the degree of Ph.D. The University of Warwick. The Centre for British and Comparative Cultural Studies. March, 1998. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: 'The Nature of Irish Post-Colonialism' 1 1. The Nature of Irish Post-Colonialism 3 2. The Tomb of the Unknown Peasant 17 3. The Irish Theorists 27 4. Conclusion: A Post-Colonial Positioning 37 Endnotes 42 CHAPTER ONE: 'Kingdom or Colony?' 49 1.1 1Blitzophrenial: The Crisis of Irish Identity 50 1.2 The Nativist Reaction 68 1.3 The Counter-Revival 79 1.4 Ireland: An Imagined Community ? 85 1.5 Conclusion 92 Endnotes 95 CHAPTER TWO: 'Irish Poetry Since the Revival' 2.1 The Celtic Revival : The Cult of the Peasant 104 2.2 The Counter-Revival : The Peasant Unmasked 124 2.3 Conclusion 142 Endnotes 146 CHAPTER THREE: 'Patrick Kavanagh's The Great Hunger - The Poet as Revisionist' 3.1 The Context of The Great Hunger - The Production of the Poem 156 3.2 The Peasant 166 3.3 Sex and the Single Farmer 181 3.4 Motherhood 190 3.5 Catholic Ireland 199 3.6 Conclusion 206 Endnotes 209 CHAPTER FOUR: 'Brendan Kennelly's Cromwell - The Kavanagh Legacy'. 222 4.1 Cromwell and The Great Hunger: Connections 4.1.1 The Epic Form 225 4.1.ii A Post-Colonial Positioning 230 4.2 Cromwell - An Introduction 233 4.3 The Nature and Consequences of Linguistic Colonisation in Cromwell 242 4.4 The Role of Religion in Cromwell 254 4.5 Cromwell and History 266 4.6 Conclusion 275 Endnotes 279 CONCLUSION 288 Endnotes 293 ,--- Appendix One 294 Appendix Two 297 Appendix Three 298 Bibliography 302 1 INTRODUCTION THE NATURE OF IRISH POST-COLONIALISM The nature of Irish post-colonialism is not fixed. The chronological periods surrounding the colonial era in Irish history are relatively unproblematic, but the real debate emerges in the analysis of the effect of the colonial era on perceptions of national identity and how these perceptions were altered or underpinned in the post-colonial nation state. The complexities involved in accurately defining the coloniser and the colonised, the colonial identity and the post-colonial identity, serve to illuminate the fact that these concepts are based on interpretations of complex and unresolved relationships which have emerged over hundreds of years. To arrive prematurely at definitive conclusions as to their nature only serves to perpetuate stereotypes beyond which the post-colonial debate must move. The best that can be hoped for is that a reasonable and sustainable position can be found in relation to the larger question of Ireland's complicated post-colonial identity. The nature of Irish colonisation and its consequences require the examination of the plurality of possible interpretations. There are no fixed boundaries but rather a series of relational positions which must be occupied on the nature of possession and dispossession, cultural connectedness and dislocation and consequent perceptions of national identity. In attempting to position Patrick Kavanagh's 1942 poem The Great Hunger and Brendan Kennelly's 1983 epic sequence Cromwell at 2 crucial points in the counter-hegemonic development of Irish post-colonial concepts of the essence of the nation, it is necessary to identify central theories that tie the two texts together. While occupying relatively different historical positions, both texts seek to counter dominant and popular conceptions of national identity by exploring, in detail, the imagination and experiences of two dominant figures in Irish national hagiography, namely the ubiquitous rural peasant and the 'Butcher of Drogheda', Oliver Cromwell. However, before discussing the degree to which The Great Hunger (henceforth abbreviated as TGH) and Cromwell challenge dominant perceptions of Irish national identity, it is important to articulate and elaborate the fundamental principles and terminology governing the use of such a difficult and contentious term as 'post-colonial' in order to construct a superstructure within which the critique offered in the respective poems becomes clarified. This introduction will look at the relevance of the work of Benedict Anderson, Homi K. Bhaba, the Indian Subaltern Studies Group, Ngugi wa Thiong l o, and Edward W. Said, amongst others, which the thesis argues provides the necessary theoretical framework within which the relevance and impact of the two texts may be more readily understood. A close study of some Irish post-colonial theorists, including David Lloyd, Luke Gibbons, Declan Kiberd and Colin Graham, will place post-colonial theory in a specifically Irish context which should further enhance the paradigmatic arrangement of the two texts. 3 1. The Nature of Irish Post-Colonialism. Laura Chrisman and Patrick Williams indicate the complexities and difficulties surrounding the applicability of the term 'post- colonial', even to politically independent countries whichhave experienced a colonial presence. They argue that 'the persistence of neo-colonialist or imperialist practices in the contemporary world is a very obvious, perhaps the most serious, obstacle to any unproblematic use of the term post-colonial' (1), and this is an idea that directly impinges upon any usage of the term in relation to the Irish colonial experience. While the chronological moment of the origin of the Free State, established by the ratification of the treaty to end the Anglo-Irish war by the Irish Parliament on January 7, 1922, is unproblematic, the huge shadow cast over the economic, social, cultural and political activity of the new government by the colonial experience and by an innately conservative Irish social order meant, in reality, according to Terence Brown, 'the establishment of an Irish state notable for a stultifying lack of social, cultural and economic ambition' (2). The inheritance of a stagnant economic regime in effect stymied any plans for social expansion while the overwhelmingly Catholic, rural and agriculturally based social order combined to produce, again in Brown's parlance, l a social order largely composed of persons disinclined to contemplate any change other than the political change that independence represented' (3). Consequently, if one accepts Ngugi Wa Thiong l o l s important insistence that a theory 4 of post-colonialism necessarily involves a degree and depth of mental as well as physical de-colonisation (4), then it certainly can be argued that 1922 cannot be heralded as the definitive moment of Irish post-colonial development but rather as the chronological departure point of a different political configuration. Indeed, Stephen Slemon argues that 'definitions of the post-colonial, of course, vary widely, but for me the concept proves most useful when not used synonymously with a post-independence historical period in once-colonised nations, but rather when it locates a specifically anti- or post-colonial discursive purchase in culture' (5). It is precisely in this context that both TGH and Cromwell achieve their critical importance. By articulating voices hitherto marginalised in Ireland's post-independence social and cultural hegemony, these texts engage in a process of de-colonisation from both the colonial and post-colonial eras. Therefore, the term 'post- colonial', in reference to TGH and Cromwell, is principally an acknowledgment of their crucial role in the demythologisation, reassessment and repositioning of crucial foundational cultural icons of the Free State rather than merely their chronological location vis-a-vis the official end of the colonial epoch. Post- colonialism, in the Irish context, represents more of an intellectual positioning than a chronological departure. The stagnation that characterised the early decades of the Irish Free State, a situation which continued after the establishment of the Republic in 1949 (6), stifled any significant social, cultural or political opposition to the prevailing post-colonial 5 climate which was exemplified by the political and social philosophies of the dominant figure of that era, Eamon de Valera. Tim Pat Coogan's assertion that, on the whole, 'de Valera did little that was useful and much that was harmful' (7) points to the inertia and conservatism that paralysed the new state, characterised as it was by lofty rhetoric concerning self- reliance on the one hand and a tacit acceptance of the economic and social necessity of widespread emigration on the other (8). Terence Brown describes the situation thus: 'In a dominant Irish Ireland consensus, ideas about Irish identity - compacted of a restrictive Catholicism, which emphasised the perils of uninhibited sexuality, and a limited version of Gaelic tradition, which emphasised its rural roots - were the substance of the nationalism that lent legitimacy to the new political order' (9). It was only through the work of counter-revival writers such as Sean 0 1 Faolain (1900-91), Frank O'Connor (1903-66), AE (George Russell: 1867-1935) and Patrick Kavanagh (1904-67) that a critical