Irish Renaissance and the Birth of a Nation Term Paper

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Irish Renaissance was a literary event at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries in which there was a revival of interest in Irish culture, expressed in a literary explosion through writers like William Butler Yeats, J.M. Synge, Sean O'Casey, and James Joyce. This occurred at the same time as the development of a new nationalist sentiment in the country, contributing to increased tensions with the British, and often memorialized in the writings of Irish authors.

For example, William Butler Yeats is identified with the mythology of early Ireland, and his works feature the stories of the Irish hero Cuchulain in particular. This mythic background is part of what gives the poet his distinctive voice. At the same time, the poet often chafes against the mythology, as if the truths it shapes for him were false. Yeats made reference to other mythologies as well, notably those of the ancient Greeks and Romans, but he seemed less concerned with those references, perhaps because he knew that those mythic stories were better known to the world at large. He may have feared that his poetry was understandable only to the Irish and not to the world at large. Yeats expresses his love for his country and its people and does so in poetry that elevates nature while finding the other-worldly in that nature at the same time, which is often where the mythology enters as well.

Synge also wrote about his homeland, and both he and O'Casey helped revive and reshape the Irish theater, something that Yeats wanted to do, though playwriting was not his strength. These and other Irish writers prepared the way for the much more unique work of James Joyce in the twentieth century, and his book of short stories, The Dubliners, also presented images of the Irish people and contributed to the understanding of Ireland in other parts of the world. More than this, these writers also expressed the nationalistic yearnings of the Irish people, often referring to the Irish uprising and to those who were waging an underground war against the British.

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William Rose Benet defines the Irish Renaissance as

"the movement at the end of the 19th century in Ireland to arouse a consciousness of cultural unity and nationality among the Irish people by reviving the literature of the Celtic past and portraying contemporary life and manners" (Benet 532). He also identities the leaders of the movement as "Edwin Martyn ( 1859-1924), drama and liturgical music; George Moore, novels and poetry; W.B. Yeats, poetry and drama; Lady Augusta Gregory, plays and studies and adaptations of traditional legends; and John M. Synge, drama" (Benet 532). He also notes the particular importance of the establishment of the Abbey Theater in Dublin for the presentation of plays on Irish life and legend, a process in which Yeats, Synge, and Lady Gregory were major figures.

George Moore was an important figure in the Irish renaissance as well, though one with some controversy. He had earlier gone to France under the view that he needed a French background to write, but he returned to Ireland and changed his view, deciding that it was time there was an Irish literature in the world:

Familiarity brought him to the conclusion that the Irish Renaissance was "but a bubble," but he had a second revelation -- "that no Catholic had written a book worth reading since the Reformation." Born into a Catholic family and still an agnostic, he determined to become a Protestant, to the no small embarrassment of the Church of Ireland clergy. (Cunliffe 111-112)

While Moore had no faith in the Irish renaissance, he became a part of it all the same, and the conflict within him was a reflection of a major conflict for Ireland, the conflict between Catholicism and Protestantism.

Marguerite Quintelli-Neary notes the elevation of Irish folklore by Yeats and others and finds that while….....

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