Chapter 3 - Origins of Modern Irish Poetry, 1880–1922

Summary

This chapter will emphasise that modern Irish poetry emerged out of, and participated in, a disparate set of poetic cultures: Irish, English, national, international, popular, middlebrow, elite. It charts how a range of poetic traditions contributed to Irish poetics during this period, including the political and literary legacies of Young Ireland, the ballad tradition, Irish- language poetry, English Romanticism, Victorian poetry and poetics, the Decadent movement, and French Symbolism. While previous accounts of Irish poets writing between 1880 and 1922 usually stress their engagements with revivalist energies and Irish subject matter, this chapter shows that such tendencies coexisted with other features more coincident with broader developments in Anglophone poetry in the British Isles.