5 - Affinities in time and space: reading the Gaelic poetry of Ireland and Scotland

Summary

In the early years of the twentieth century, Patrick Pearse engaged in heated debate in the pages of the newspaper An Claidheamh Soluis about the future direction of literature in Irish. The Irish cultural revival was in full swing. Douglas Hyde, who later became the first president of Ireland, had written of the need to de-anglicise Ireland, and modernisers and conservatives were at daggers drawn. Pearse's position was nuanced and wise. ‘We want no Gothic revival’ was one of his more famous statements, one which seemed to place him firmly at a distance from those who would eschew the modern world and modern forms of the language in favour of older native models and an outdated, if highly codified, form of language. But Pearse also called for balance, and advocated that ‘if Irish literature is to flourish it must get in touch on the one hand with its own past and on the other with the mind of contemporary Europe’. As literary criticism re Irish developed through the following century, it engaged in vigorous debate, much soul searching and a good deal of experimentation, subtle and brash, on these issues until it arrived at a state, towards the end of the twentieth century, where the most creative and persuasive markers of its modernity were – I will argue – precisely achieved through the reconfiguration of many of its most deeply rooted and traditional components, whether conceptual, formal or tropic.