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Celts, Carthaginians and constitutions: Anglo-Irish literary relations, 1780 - 1820

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2016

Norman Vance
Norman Vance*
Affiliation:
University of Sussex
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Extract

F. S. L. Lyons in his Ford lectures at Oxford, and in a broadcast talk, has stressed the need for a new general theory of Irish culture, a wider understanding of the Irish tradition. This essay is an attempt to take a few steps in this direction. It will review some of the English literature written in Ireland between 1780 and 1820, and trace its connections with Ireland and with England. In the forty years after the Volunteer movement, it will be argued, Irish authors writing in English, influenced by new ideas about Celts and constitutions and even about Carthaginians, did something to establish a tradition of specifically Irish literature. This has all too often been neglected or misunderstood by literary historians, for whom Anglo-Irish literature begins more than half a century later.

Type
Articles
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 22 , Issue 87 , March 1981 , pp. 216 - 238
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 1981

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