For Gerald of Wales, religion was one of the most essential aspects of being a civilized human being. Therefore, when he wrote, The History and Topography of Ireland, he portrayed its inhabitants as subhuman and barbaric during his apparent travels to Ireland. As a colonizer, Gerald picked a far away place in which many had not been to, in order to establish them as the “other”. Unfortunately, for Gerald, he may have ridiculed the Irish for their lifestyle conveyed in his writing, but his exploitation of them most likely was done because he could in fact relate to them. In the book, The Postcolonial Middle Ages, Jeffery Jerome Cohen’s analysis in his chapter, “Hybrids, Monsters, Borderlands: The Bodies of Gerald of Wales”, closely focuses on Gerald’s cultural hybridity, which mirrors his accounts of the Irish. Although he deemed the Irish as barbaric, they were also hybrids, thus he also shared a feeling of displacement with them. Nonetheless, he still held himself to a higher degree because they did not properly celebrate Christianity, ultimately leading them to make other unpleasant decisions.
It is not obvious in The History and Topography of Ireland that Gerald is a hybrid, but when reading Cohen alongside the book, it seems that the negative depiction of the Irish was intentional for personal reasons. In his chapter, Cohen provides, “Gerald of Wales suggest[ion] that medieval hybridity is the admixture of categories, traumas, and temporalities that reconfigure what it means to be human. Medieval hybridity is inherently monstrous” (89). In his proposal, Gerald is demonstrating the rejection of any type of crossbreeding between cultures, races, and species. Although he feels that hybridity constitutes the lack of humanity, his...
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...ng it as bestial, it was easy enough to use the idea of hybridity to turn people against the Irish. Cohen goes on to explain that Gerald’s texts, including, “Topographia Hibernica are reductive texts that unabashedly glorify the invasion of Ireland” (94). History and Typography of Ireland, only made it more clear to his readers that something must be done for the Irish, because colonization would “help” the beasts.
It seems that Gerald always suppressed any feelings of connection between himself and any hybrid, therefore it would be just to suggest that his book would have also had an agenda to turn people against the atrocious and immoral hybridity of the Irish.
Gerald of Wales’ was most likely never in Ireland, and his writing is not an accurate portrayal of the Irish, but a chance to discuss hybridity and turn his readers against it while also the Irish.
In 476 AD, centuries of amassed knowledge in science and philosophy, literature and the arts lay in peril of destruction alongside the physical Roman Empire. Thomas Cahill's book How the Irish Saved Civilization sheds light upon the role of the Irish people in the conservation and rebirth of civilization and the Western tradition after the fall of the Roman Empire. It is here that Cahill opens his book and after a brief description of classical civilization, that we are given a look at another people, far different from the Romans and Greeks- the vibrant and intriguing Celts. How these people came in contact with the civilized world and how they assisted in pulling the West out of the Dark ages is, then, the paramount of Cahill's argument.
Included within the anthology The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction,1[1] are the works of great Irish authors written from around three hundred years ago, until as recently as the last decade. Since one might expect to find in an anthology such as this only expressions and interpretations of Irish or European places, events or peoples, some included material could be quite surprising in its contrasting content. One such inclusion comes from the novel Black Robe,2[2] by Irish-born author Brian Moore. Leaving Ireland as a young man afforded Moore a chance to see a great deal of the world and in reflection afforded him a great diversity of setting and theme in his writings. And while his Black Robe may express little of Ireland itself, it expresses much of Moore in his exploration into evolving concepts of morality, faith, righteousness and the ever-changing human heart.
Stade, George, and Karen Karbiener. “Heaney Seamus.” Bloom’s Literature. Facts on File, Inc. Web. 30 Mar. 2014
The Republic of Ireland is a beautiful country well known as the “Emerald Isle” because of its rolling green hills. Ireland is full of landforms and accumulates much rain which helps keep Ireland very lush. Since Ireland is an island the climate tends to stay cool because it is surrounded by water. Along its shoreline there are many breathtaking landmarks. Ireland has a very similar government to the United States with similar challenges.
"Ricorso: A Knowledge of Irish Literature." Ricorso: A Knowledge of Irish Literature. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 May 2014.
Yeats, William Butler. The De-Anglicizing of Ireland” in Yeats’s Poetry, Drama, and Prose. ed. Pethica, James. W.W. Norton & Company, USA, 2000.
There is particular consideration given to the political climate in this story. It is incorporated with social and ethnic concerns that are prevalent. The story also addresses prejudice and the theme of ethnic stereotyping through his character development. O'Connor does not present a work that is riddled with Irish slurs or ethnic approximations. Instead, he attempts to provide an account that is both informative and accurate.
The ancient mythology of Ireland is one of its’ greatest assets. The glorious, poetic tales of battles, super humans, demigods and heroes ranks among the best of ancient literature. The book of the Dun Cow, (Lebor na huidre), was written around 1100 and contains stories from the eighth and ninth centuries. The Book of Invasions, (Lebor Gabala), tells how the mythical ancestors of the Irish, the God-like Tuatha Dé Danann, wrestled Ireland (or Erin) from misshapen Fir Bolg in fantastic battles. The Fir Bolg were traditionally linked to Gaul and Britain so the analogy between them and the invading English was complete.
Within the work, Heaney anthropomorphizes both countries. He compares the geological features of Ireland to the ‘tracked and stretchmarked body’ of a woman, whose most intimate identity - here symbolised by the ‘ferny bed’ and ‘bogland’ is invaded by the phallic ‘battering ram’ of an ‘imperially Male’ invader.
Reinares, Maria Laura Barberan, "Remapping and Renaming Ireland: A Postcolonial Look at the Problem of Language and Identity in Brian Friel's Translations." (2007). Graduate English Association New Voices Conference 2007.Paper 1
The years 1870 to 1890 in Ireland saw the fervent battle of Charles Stewart Parnell and his Home Rule party for home rule in Ireland. This consisted of Ireland having its own parliament to deal with internal affairs while still remaining under the control of Westminster in international affairs. It was not the desire for a full separation from Britain that would come later. However, by 1890, problems in Parnell’s personal life lead to a breakdown in communication with the Prime Minister and to a split in the Home Rule party. According to M E Collins, this left a void in Irish politics and life that was filled with a new cultural awareness and a questioning of Irish identity: ‘the new movements were different. They stressed the importance of Irish identity, Irish race and Irish culture’ (170 M E Collins, Ireland 1868 - 1966). It is at this point that Fanon’s ‘Wretched of the Earth’ becomes relevant to Irish history. In his chapter entitled ‘On National Consciousness’, Fanon stresses the colonised native fears of being assimilated totally into the culture of the coloniser, of being ‘swamped’ (169 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth). These were the exact concerns that occupied the minds of the Irish people after the failure of home rule. They began to be anxious about what Collins terms ‘the distinguishing marks of Irishness’: ‘a culture and language that was different to Britain’s’.
A collection of short stories published in 1907, Dubliners, by James Joyce, revolves around the everyday lives of ordinary citizens in Dublin, Ireland (Freidrich 166). According to Joyce himself, his intention was to "write a chapter of the moral history of [his] country and [he] chose Dublin for the scene because the city seemed to [b]e the centre of paralysis" (Friedrich 166). True to his goal, each of the fifteen stories are tales of disappointment, darkness, captivity, frustration, and flaw. The book is divided into four sections: childhood, adolescence, maturity, and public life (Levin 159). The structure of the book shows that gradually, citizens become trapped in Dublin society (Stone 140). The stories portray Joyce's feeling that Dublin is the epitome of paralysis and all of the citizens are victims (Levin 159). Although each story from Dubliners is a unique and separate depiction, they all have similarities with each other. In addition, because the first three stories -- The Sisters, An Encounter, and Araby parallel each other in many ways, they can be seen as a set in and of themselves. The purpose of this essay is to explore one particular similarity in order to prove that the childhood stories can be seen as specific section of Dubliners. By examining the characters of Father Flynn in The Sisters, Father Butler in An Encounter, and Mangan's sister in Araby, I will demonstrate that the idea of being held captive by religion is felt by the protagonist of each story. In this paper, I argue that because religion played such a significant role in the lives of the middle class, it was something that many citizens felt was suffocating and from which it was impossible to get away. Each of the three childhood stories uses religion to keep the protagonist captive. In The Sisters, Father Flynn plays an important role in making the narrator feel like a prisoner. Mr. Cotter's comment that "… a young lad [should] run about and play with young lads of his own age…" suggests that the narrator has spent a great deal of time with the priest. Even in death, the boy can not free himself from the presence of Father Flynn (Stone 169) as is illustrated in the following passage: "But the grey face still followed me. It murmured; and I understood that it desired to confess something.
Ronsley, Joseph, ed., Myth and Reality in Irish Literature, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, Canada, 1977
... of stories Dubliners, James Joyce leads the reader to the conclusion that the Catholic Church took the role of a governing body, and that modernist movement was inhibited by the outdated ideas of the Catholic Church. The story “The Boarding House” provides the reader with excellent examples of a priest who overextended his role in society, and it has been shown that such an occurrence has negative effects of the society as a whole. The Catholic church as a burdensome entity is very well shown in Joyce’s’ the “The sisters”. The story also provides us with a good explanation of the social connotations of religion within the modernist movement. In the stories of Dubliners the legal system is replaced by the institute of religion, and it is the presence and social context of the Catholic Church which prevents the Irish community from advancement.
McCann et al. Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies, 1994, 95-109).