Irish Literature in English Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Irish Literature in position - turn out ExampleTo what extent those pendulum movements characterize Irish literary identityWith the rise of home(a)ism in Europe, the Irish nation sought to re-discover its own distinct culture, which had progressively been erased by the English hegemony over the Irish territory. magical spell successive British governments had ignored Irish culture and language, the induction of the Irish Free State in 1922 allowed refreshing possibilities for the nation to re-discover its forgotten cultural roots. To claim itself a nation-state, Ireland needed to find itself a reliable national identity (see B. Anderson 2000). As a consequence, national heroes (like Parnell), icons, symbols and traditions embodying national ideals, and the promotion of Irish past bill and language, became new standards for self-definition of the nation. Literature obviously had to play an important role in the promotion of this new Irish national identity. The Irish Literary Revival, founded by William Butler Yeats, sought into Irish myths and folklore to discover or re-invent the dependable roots of Irish identity and get rid of colonialist stereotypes. This created a new Irish literature, developing on nostalgic visions of old rural Ireland (before industrialization) and adapting oral folklore to written narration. However, most poems and plays by Yeats were written in English, show a true miscegenation of cultures within the texts. Whereas Yeats works reworked Irish myths and folklore, the strong influence of Percy Bysshe Shelley unveiled an English shadow on his texts. Yeats and the movement that he founded showed a strong will to take distance from the English culture, yet this defiance only proved that the English culture served as a landmark for the creation of an Irish national culture and literary tradition, hence showing that the English influence could never be totally erased.Minority voices versus Irish national literary conventions.Iris h nationalists striving for the recognition of Irish traditions indirectly conveyed a political message (to claim independence), so as to invent an intrinsic antithesis, the concept of un-Irishness. Ignoring the new Irish national conventions, led by the Celtic Revival, came to be considered as an act of defiance against national standards, and authors who chose to criticize the national narrow conception of Irishness indirectly accepted (or sought) an ideological exile from the mainstream. Irish authors who showed a tough scepticism vis--vis new national standards, like James Joyce or Samuel Beckett, were in fact adopting an leakage distance from the turbulent issues during the modern era. Writers chose a more peaceful way to deal with the Irish identity, through with(predicate) writing. They considered that re-inventing national traditions had paradoxically erased the liberty that Irish people were so much seeking on their