Irish Literary Tradition

with Maxim Fomin

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Week 11:

Late nineteenth century Irish literary revival:

Writings of W. B. Yeats, D. Hyde and P. Pearse

Literature in Ireland in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century had two clear linguistic literary trends from which it further developed. Nationally and internationally, the most famous brand was known as “The Celtic Revival”. It started as early as the time of Macpherson in the late eighteenth century and continued down to the time of Yeats, Lady Gregory, Synge and others. Yet, in the 1890s, one could also witness the rise of a revival of literature in the Modern Irish language, udner the isntigation of Douglas Hyde and his companions in “The Gaelic League” (Modern Irish equivalent Conradh na Gaedhilge). Given the character of this cultural and social linguistic situation, controversial to some and plain obvious to many, one could hardly have expected that the two spheres of English and Irish could stay away from each other. We will look at the various exponents of Anglo-Irish and/vs. Gaelic literature and will try to indicate to what extent they are obliged to both the medieval and the contemporary folk narrative tradition of Gaelic Ireland.

Select a Week:

Week 1 Introduction go
Week 2Encounters of saints with heroes go
Week 3The Ulster cycle of tales go
Week 4Early Irish native literary tradition go
Week 5Middle Irish satirical wiritngs go
Week 6Middle Irish romances & Fenian lays go
Week 7The penetration of saga material into the folklore tradition go
Week 8Irish historical and pseudo-historical writings go
Week 9The Irish lords on the continent go
Week 10The decline of the bardic tradition go
Week 11Late nineteenth century Irish literary revival go
Week 12Twentieth century Irish literature go