Anger and nostalgia: Seamus Heaney and the ghost of the father – Critical Essay Adrian Frazier EVEN BEFORE Seamus Heaney won the Nobel Prize (1995) and then delivered a bestselling translation of Beowulf(1999), he was for Irish, American, and English readers the most admired and lovable of poets. He won that wide affection both by […]
Category: Eire-Ireland:Journal of Irish Studies
Dead men talking: Frank McGuinness’s Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme Tom Herron In a tiny stone church On the desolate headland A lost tribe is singing “Abide With Me.” (1) PYPER: Again. As always, again. Why does this persist? What more have we to tell each other? I remember nothing today. […]
The Mild Irish Girl: domesticating the national tale Thomas Tracy INTRODUCTION [Sydney Owenson’s sentiments are] mischievous in tendency, and profligate in principle; licentious and irreverent in the highest degree … If … she could be persuaded to exchange her idle raptures for common sense, practice a little self-denial, and gather a few precepts of humility, […]
The process of migration and the reinvention of self: the experiences of returning Irish emigrants Mary P. Corcoran IRISH migration at the end of the twentieth century encompasses complex and multidimensional processes. Whereas Irish emigrants were once drawn almost exclusively from the agricultural and laborer classes, in the closing decades of the twentieth century emigration […]
Belated Behan: Brendan Behan and the cultural politics of memory John Brannigan ON the evening of 30 November 1939, Brendan Behan went to his family home, 70 Kildare Road in Dublin, and packed a suitcase. The suitcase contained chlorate of potash and paraffin wax, which was mixed with gelignite to form an explosive compound. It […]
The war against the R.I.C., 1919-21 – Royal Irish Constabulary W.J. Lowe I THE period from Easter Week in 1916 through the end of the Irish Civil War in 1923 continues to attract intense popular and scholarly interest, as reflected in a growing literature of historical treatments, local studies, and personal memoirs. The armed campaign […]
“The same sound but with a different meaning”: music, repetition, and identity in Bernard Mac Laverty’s Grace Notes Gerry Smyth INTRODUCTION THE last decade of the twentieth century witnessed a proliferation of novels dealing with the subject of music. I shall leave it to some enthusiastic young scholar to undertake a full inventory, but even […]
“The republic of letters”: Frederick Douglas, Ireland, and the Irish narratives Fionnghuala Sweeney ONE of the most notable visitors to Irish shores during the nineteenth century was Frederick Douglass, author, abolitionist, and fugitive slave. (1) Douglass had left the United States following the publication in 1845 of his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick […]
Patterns of Irish emigration to America, 1783-1800 Maurice J. Bric THE general features of Irish emigration to colonial America are clear and relatively undisputed: it was largely of Ulster origin; the majority sailed for the Hudson and Delaware valleys; and the departures peaked at three points: 1717-20, 1725-29, and during the nine years prior to […]
Young Irish workers: class implications of men’s and women’s experiences in gilded age Chicago – Statistical Data Included Patricia Kelleher DISCUSSION of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Irish Americans’ “class”–their status as well as their behaviors and attitudes concerning class mobility and working-class solidarity–has been vexed and contentious. The topic’s inherent complexity, in combination with the […]