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After Ireland: Writing the Nation from Beckett to the Present
Ireland is suffering from a crisis of authority. Catholic Church scandals, political corruption, and economic collapse have shaken the Irish people’s faith in their institutions and thrown the nation’s struggle for independence into question. While Declan Kiberd explores how political failures and economic globalization have eroded Irish sovereignty, he also sees a way out of this crisis. After Ireland surveys thirty works by modern writers that speak to worrisome trends in Irish life and yet also imagine a renewed, more plural and open nation.
After Dublin burned in 1916, Samuel Beckett feared “the birth of a nation might also seal its doom.” In Waiting for Godot and a range of powerful works by other writers, Kiberd traces the development of an early warning system in Irish literature that portended social, cultural, and political decline. Edna O’Brien, Frank O’Connor, Seamus Heaney, and Michael Hartnett lamented the loss of the Irish language, Gaelic tradition, and rural life. Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Eavan Boland grappled with institutional corruption and the end of traditional Catholicism. These themes, though bleak, led to audacious experimentation, exemplified in the plays of Brian Friel and Tom Murphy and the novels of John Banville. Their achievements embody the defiance and resourcefulness of Ireland’s founding spirit―and a strange kind of hope.
After Ireland places these writers and others at the center of Ireland’s ongoing fight for independence. In their diagnoses of Ireland’s troubles, Irish artists preserve and extend a humane culture, planting the seeds of a sound moral economy.
After Dublin burned in 1916, Samuel Beckett feared “the birth of a nation might also seal its doom.” In Waiting for Godot and a range of powerful works by other writers, Kiberd traces the development of an early warning system in Irish literature that portended social, cultural, and political decline. Edna O’Brien, Frank O’Connor, Seamus Heaney, and Michael Hartnett lamented the loss of the Irish language, Gaelic tradition, and rural life. Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Eavan Boland grappled with institutional corruption and the end of traditional Catholicism. These themes, though bleak, led to audacious experimentation, exemplified in the plays of Brian Friel and Tom Murphy and the novels of John Banville. Their achievements embody the defiance and resourcefulness of Ireland’s founding spirit―and a strange kind of hope.
After Ireland places these writers and others at the center of Ireland’s ongoing fight for independence. In their diagnoses of Ireland’s troubles, Irish artists preserve and extend a humane culture, planting the seeds of a sound moral economy.
560 pages, Hardcover
Published January 8, 2018
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About the author
Declan Kiberd
47 books29 followersDeclan Kiberd is a professor of Anglo-Irish literature at the University College Dublin and the author of Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation, which won the Irish Times Prize, and of Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday Life in Joyce's Masterpiece. He lives in Dublin.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 3, 2022
This is a close reading of a selection of Irish novels, plays and poetry from around 1920 - 2010. Here are some of the works and authors covered: Samuel Beckett, The Bell, Maire Mhac an tSaoi, Edna O'Brien, Frank O'Connor, Richard Power, Brian Friel, Seamus Heaney, John Banville, Michael Hartnett, Tom Murphy, Frank McGuinness, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Derek Mahon, Eavan Boland, John McGahern, Roddy Doyle, Seamus Deane, Eilis Ni Dhuibhne, Joseph O'Connor, John McGahern, Conor McPherson, Claire Keegan, Kate Thompson. I had read some of those authors so that helped a lot to appreciate the reviews but it's not essential to have read them. A good few are on my future reading list now so I'm sure I'll come back to After Ireland.
The conclusion is the best chapter in the book because it's a round up of all the threads discussed earlier. One theory voiced by Kiberd was that we were at the end nationalism and the idea of a national literature. Ireland has become globalised. One of the plays discussed is Conor McPherson's The Seafarer which is very much rooted in Ireland. Just as I put down the book, I heard an ad on RTE radio for a production in Dublin of Conor McPherson's - Girl from the North Country which is set in the US. So maybe that proved Kiberd's point.
However, there's a lot of very Irish literature which has come out between 2012-2022 which is not here - Louise Kennedy, Sinead Gleeson, Louise Bennett, Colm Toibin, Sally Rooney, Donal Ryan and Colin Barrett are a few examples. So, there's plenty of room for another academic to do a close reading of what's come out of Ireland between 2012-2022.
The conclusion is the best chapter in the book because it's a round up of all the threads discussed earlier. One theory voiced by Kiberd was that we were at the end nationalism and the idea of a national literature. Ireland has become globalised. One of the plays discussed is Conor McPherson's The Seafarer which is very much rooted in Ireland. Just as I put down the book, I heard an ad on RTE radio for a production in Dublin of Conor McPherson's - Girl from the North Country which is set in the US. So maybe that proved Kiberd's point.
However, there's a lot of very Irish literature which has come out between 2012-2022 which is not here - Louise Kennedy, Sinead Gleeson, Louise Bennett, Colm Toibin, Sally Rooney, Donal Ryan and Colin Barrett are a few examples. So, there's plenty of room for another academic to do a close reading of what's come out of Ireland between 2012-2022.
October 1, 2019
Shave half a star for this book’s being less satisfying than Kiberd’s previous work, but it’s still very good.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews