Chapter 4 - Anglo-Irish Transitions

Summary

In the early years of the twentieth century, the wide dissemination in Ireland of British popular literature (including penny dreadfuls, educational books, newspapers, and magazines) prompted an intensification of activities by Irish writers keen to preserve and support a distinct Irish literary tradition. Such activities ranged from W. B. Yeats’s efforts to construct a national canon centred on the folklore of an ancient Ireland predating English colonisation, to the nationalist vision of a new Gaelic Irish culture, predicated on Catholicism and the Irish language, promoted by figures such as D. P. Moran. There was of course much discussion, in this period, about how exactly Irish literature could define itself against British literature. Yet at the same time, even among many separatists, there was a very strong sense of attachment to English literary culture. This chapter describes the complex patterns of influence and resistance that shaped both British and Irish literature between 1900 and 1920 by examining some of the popular, periodical, pedagogical, and literary texts that were central to the traffic in ideas back and forth across the Irish sea.