Birth of an Independent Ireland Moulding the Young in the Irish Periodical Press E
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Elena Ogliari Birth of an Independent Ireland Moulding the Young in the Irish Periodical Press E. Ogliari - Birth of an Independent Ireland: Moulding the Young in the Irish Periodical Press - Milano, LED, 2020 ISSN 2283-5628 - ISBN 978-88-7916-951-6 - https://www.ledonline.it/index.php/LCM-journal/pages/view/LCM-series LM LINGUE CULTURE MEDIAZIONI C LANGUAGES CULTURES MEDIATION https://www.ledonline.it/LCM-Journal La Collana / The Series Dipartimento di Scienze della Mediazione Linguistica e di Studi Interculturali Università degli Studi di Milano Direzione della Collana / Editor of LCM - The Series Marie-Christine Jullion Direzione responsabile della Rivista / Editors-in-Chief of the Journal Paola Catenaccio - Giuliana Garzone Comitato di direzione / Editors Marina Brambilla - Luigi Bruti Liberati - Maria Vittoria Calvi - Gabriella Cartago Lidia De Michelis - Dino Gavinelli - Marie-Christine Jullion - Alessandra Lavagnino Chiara Molinari - Giovanni Turchetta Comitato di redazione / Sub-Editors Maria Matilde Benzoni - Paola Cotta Ramusino - Mario De Benedittis Kim Grego - Giovanna Mapelli - Fabio Mollica - Bettina Marta Mottura Mauro Giacomo Novelli - Letizia Osti - Maria Cristina Paganoni Giuseppe Sergio - Virginia Sica - Nicoletta Vallorani Comitato scientifico internazionale / International Advisory Board James Archibald (Translation Studies) - Hugo de Burgh (Chinese Media Studies) Kristen Brustad (Arabic Linguistics) - Daniel Coste (French Language) Luciano Curreri (Italian Literature) - Claudio Di Meola (German Linguistics) Donatella Dolcini (Hindi Studies) - Johann Drumbl (German Linguistics) Denis Ferraris (Italian Literature) - Lawrence Grossberg (Cultural Studies) Stephen Gundle (Film and Television Studies) - Tsuchiya Junji (Sociology) John McLeod (Post-colonial Studies) - Estrella Montolío Durán (Spanish Language) Silvia Morgana (Italian Linguistics) - Samir Marzouki (Translation, Cultural Relations) Mbare Ngom (Post-Colonial Literatures) - Christiane Nord (Translation Studies) Roberto Perin (History) - Giovanni Rovere (Italian Linguistics) Lara Ryazanova-Clarke (Russian Studies) - Shi-Xu (Discourse and Cultural Studies) Srikant Sarangi (Discourse Analysis) Françoise Sabban (Centre d’études sur la Chine moderne et contemporaine - Chinese Studies) Itala Vivan (Cultural Studies - Museum Studies) All works published in this series have undergone external peer review. Tutti i lavori pubblicati nella presente Collana sono stati sottoposti a peer review da parte di revisori esterni. E. Ogliari - Birth of an Independent Ireland: Moulding the Young in the Irish Periodical Press - Milano, LED, 2020 ISSN 2283-5628 - ISBN 978-88-7916-951-6 - https://www.ledonline.it/index.php/LCM-journal/pages/view/LCM-series ISSN 2283-5628 ISBN 978-88-7916-951-6 Copyright © 2020 Via Cervignano 4 - 20137 Milano www.lededizioni.com - www.ledonline.it - E-mail: [email protected] I diritti di riproduzione, memorizzazione e archiviazione elettronica, pubblicazione con qualsiasi mezzo analogico o digitale (comprese le copie fotostatiche, i supporti digitali e l’inserimento in banche dati) e i diritti di traduzione e di adattamento totale o parziale sono riservati per tutti i paesi. 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Ogliari - Birth of an Independent Ireland: Moulding the Young in the Irish Periodical Press - Milano, LED, 2020 ISSN 2283-5628 - ISBN 978-88-7916-951-6 - https://www.ledonline.it/index.php/LCM-journal/pages/view/LCM-series Contents Introduction 7 The Relevance of Periodical Literature 1. The Long Quest for Irish-Made Periodicals 17 1.1. How Ireland’s youth became a matter of concern for the nationalists (p. 17) – 1.2. National Schools as instrumenti regni (p. 22) – 1.3. The Anglicising force of British story papers (p. 28) – 1.4. First attempts in the battle against British periodicals (p. 34) 2. Striving for an ‘Autonomous’ Production 39 2.1. The new crop of periodicals at a glance: their Janus-faced nature (p. 39) – 2.2. Our Boys: a compound of Catholicism and Irishness (p. 44) – 2.3. Fianna: the story paper of the Irish Boy Scouts (p. 55) – 2.4. Young Ireland: support for party interests and business nous (p. 62) – 2.5. St. Enda’s: in the wake of Patrick Pearse (p. 67) – 2.6. Further remarks on the duality of Irish peri- odicals (p. 71) 3. Moulding the Views of Ireland’s Youth: Momentous Events 75 in the Juvenile Press 3.1. Premise (p. 75) – 3.2. Dismantling ‘fake news’, debunking myths (p. 77) – 3.3. Demanding youth’s agency for the just wars (p. 89) – 3.4. Concluding remarks: who should fight for Ireland? (p. 96) 4. Ideals of Girlhood 99 4.1. Daughters of the Nation? How could Irish girls contribute to the cause? (p. 99) – 4.2. The national awakening of Irish women and girls (p. 104) – 4.3. Blurred boundaries (p. 119) – 4.4. Con- cluding remarks: contested girlhood and ideal boyhood (p. 121) 5. Ideals of Boyhood 123 5.1. Stereotyping the Irish boy (p. 123) – 5.2. How to forge the ideal boy: the restoration of Gaelic pastimes (p. 132) – 5.3. An 5 E. Ogliari - Birth of an Independent Ireland: Moulding the Young in the Irish Periodical Press - Milano, LED, 2020 ISSN 2283-5628 - ISBN 978-88-7916-951-6 - https://www.ledonline.it/index.php/LCM-journal/pages/view/LCM-series Contents ideal boy: the athletic hero (p. 141) – 5.4. The soldier hero fighting for Ireland (p. 153) Conclusion 167 Who Answered the Call? References 173 1. Archival material (p. 173) – 2. Secondary sources (p. 174) Acknowledgements 185 6 E. Ogliari - Birth of an Independent Ireland: Moulding the Young in the Irish Periodical Press - Milano, LED, 2020 ISSN 2283-5628 - ISBN 978-88-7916-951-6 - https://www.ledonline.it/index.php/LCM-journal/pages/view/LCM-series Introduction The Relevance of Periodical Literature As Ireland moves through the centenary of commemoration of the War of Independence and the establishment of the Irish Free State, it seems only right to direct our attention to the primary role played by the youths in the revolutionary years between 1913 and 1923, when Irish young people actively participated in the life of their country as agents of nation-building. In part, they had been taught how to do so. Although they were never mere recipients who passively absorbed pre- formed systems of values, the young had been mentored by nationalist groups and individuals to become active citizens and the builders of a free, independent Ireland. In the early twentieth century, multiple actors of nationalist sympathies impacted on their lives through social and cultural activities such as schooling, youth organisations, and cultural production ranging from historical works to popular periodical literature (cf. Boylan and Gallagher 2018, 2). According to these nationalists, the reading of suitable, educational material was especially effective in awakening Irish national conscious- ness. In 1919, as the country was plunged in the turmoil of the Anglo- Irish war, one of the periodicals for juveniles examined here, St. Enda’s, reminded its readers of the political importance and educational value of reading, as “by reading and meditating on our history we should prepare ourselves to serve our country when she demands our aid, no matter what the cost. And we should always keep Gavan Duffy’s advice before our minds – ‘Educate that you may be free’” (SE Jul. 1919, 231). The crucial 1913-1923 decade was a key period in the development of the Irish periodical press, central to which was a focus on publica- tions intended for juveniles. As seen in the quotation above, the aim of the inculcation of moral values in readers, which connoted the ethos of much reading material for the young in the nineteenth century, com- 7 E. Ogliari - Birth of an Independent Ireland: Moulding the Young in the Irish Periodical Press - Milano, LED, 2020 ISSN 2283-5628 - ISBN 978-88-7916-951-6 - https://www.ledonline.it/index.php/LCM-journal/pages/view/LCM-series Introduction – The Relevance of Periodical Literature bined in the revolutionary period with a concern to create a national consciousness. Irish nationalists believed that dedicated periodicals were particularly formative, as they could be used to foster or re-invigorate strong feelings of patriotism and to mould a new citizenry according to nationalist values. This belief was not a novelty – in fact, it was rooted in experience. Since the mid-nineteenth century, when the first Irish separatist news- papers Freeman and The Nation began to disseminate nationalist rhetoric and mobilise public opinion, the Irish nationalist press had been a key factor in awakening a political consciousness. Newspapers and magazines were decisive in the articulation of the concept of Irish nationalism and the main medium for its popularisation not only among the women and men in Ireland, but also throughout the diasporic Irish communities in Great Britain and America (Andrews 2014, 7; Tilley 2020, 139). In the 1910s, this nationalist paper landscape was completed by the establishment of four periodicals for Irish youths, as vying for their cultural allegiance there emerged Our Boys, Fianna, Young Ireland, and St. Enda’s. In the nationalists’ eyes, they were the long-awaited Irish replies to the successful British papers modelled on the Boy’s Own Paper, the home-grown substitutes that could facilitate the young’s access to politics and culture in a desirable form.