1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910796715603321

Autore

McDiarmid Lucy

Titolo

The Irish Art of Controversy / / Lucy McDiarmid

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Ithaca, NY : , : Cornell University Press, , [2018]

©2005

ISBN

1-5017-2869-5

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (xvii, 280 pages) : illustrations

Disciplina

941.5082/1

Soggetti

HISTORY / Europe / Ireland

Ireland Intellectual life 20th century

Ireland Civilization 20th century

Ireland History 1910-1921

Ireland History 1901-1910

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. [259]-270) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Introduction: The Irish Controversy -- 1. Hugh Lane and the Decoration of Dublin, 1908- -- 2. The Man Who Died for the Language: Rev. Dr. O'Hickey and the Irish Language Controversy, 1908-9 -- 3. The Shewing-up of Dublin Castle: Lady Gregory, Shaw, and Blanco Posnet, August 1909 -- 4. Hunger and Hysteria: The "Save the Dublin Kiddies" Campaign, October-November 1913 -- 5. The Afterlife of Roger Casement: Memory, Folklore, Ghosts, 1916- Epilogue: Controversy as "Heritage" -- Chronologies of the Controversies -- Notes -- Sources -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Controversies are high drama: in them people speak lines as colorful and passionate as any recited on stage. In the years before the 1916 Rising, public battles were fought in Ireland over French paintings, a maverick priest, Dublin slum children, and theatrical censorship. Controversy was "popular," wrote George Moore, especially "when accompanied with the breaking of chairs. "In her new book, Lucy McDiarmid offers a witty and illuminating account of these and other controversies, antagonistic exchanges with no single or no obvious high ground. They merit attention, in her view, not because the Irish



are more combative than other peoples, but because controversies functioned centrally in the debate over Irish national identity. They offered to everyone direct or vicarious involvement in public life: the question they articulated was not "Irish Ireland or English Ireland" but "whose Irish Ireland" would dominate when independence was finally achieved. The Irish Art of Controversy recovers the histories of "the man who died for the language," Father O'Hickey, who defied the bishops in his fight for Irish Gaelic; Lady Gregory and Bernard Shaw's defense of the Abbey Theatre against Dublin Castle; and the 1913 "Save the Dublin Kiddies" campaign, in which priests attacked socialists over custody of Catholic children. The notorious Roger Casement-British consul, Irish rebel, humanitarian, poet-forms the subject of the last chapter, which offers the definitive commentary on the long-lasting controversy over his diaries. McDiarmid's use of archival sources, especially little-known private letters, indicates the way intimate exchanges, as well as cartoons, ballads, and editorials, may exist within a public narrative. In its original treatment of the rich material Yeats called "intemperate speech," The Irish Art of Controversy suggests new ways of thinking about modern Ireland and about controversy's bluff, bravado, and improvisational flair.