the novel in Irish literature

This paper traces the … changes in the Irish novel in the centuries 18th , 19th, 20th, 21st.

Introduction

Ireland is an island that was first inhabited between 8000 BC and 7000 BC. By 1200 BC, the Celt settled in Ireland, and they have a long-lasting effect on Irish culture until today. The Celt spoke Q-Celtic, and through the centuries with the blending with the first inhabitant, the language evolved into Irish Gaelic. This language and their culture cause a division between Irish and the rest of Europe. The Celt created beautiful poetry and drew impressive artwork, which still has a significant impact on Irish culture and literature. Irish literature is considered as the oldest literature in Europe after the works of literature of Greek and Latin. Although Irish writing has its own unique national and linguistic characteristics, it has been inevitably intertwined with English literature. Numerous known Irish authors lived, sometimes worked in exile for long periods in England, which caused the sense of instability in the development of the Irish literature as a unique. The history of Ireland of colonization, starvation, mass emigration, fight, rebellion, and civil war provides rich content to its literature. Since the 17th century, the Irish community has been a colonial, independent, and national one altogether. This hybridity raises the issue of endless cultural tension in Irish writing, which has evolved around four concerns: land, religion, nationality, and language. The battle of Kinsale with the defeat of Hugh O’Neil, 2end earl of Tyrone in 1601, turned on the gradual, century-long collapse of Gaelic civilization as the controlling mode of Irish existence. It also marked the hastening of a long process of Protestant British colonization that would dramatically reconstruct the land, the religion, and the language of Ireland. Out of the deep cultural crisis brought on by this process, “Anglo-Irish” writing emerged.

The question is: to what extent do the above influence the Irish literature and, therefore, the Irish novel throughout the following centuries.

Part one: 18th century novel and before

During the 18th century the nature of the Irish society was controversy. The Protestant and English-speaking minority dominated the country after their triumph over Roman Catholic Ireland at the Battles of the Byone and Aughrim (1690-1691); such domination was called the Protestant Ascendancy. The inheritance of the political settlement in Ireland that pursued the battle Augurim had a strongly communal and colonial impact on the writing of this period.

Accordingly, 18th century Ireland produced what is called Anglo-Irish literature which can be distinguishable from the English traditional writing. The reason behind the fact that Irish novels have nothing specifically Irish and were written mostly; in terms of content; with an English audience in view is the traveling of Irish writers to England. Many prominent Irish authors such as: Burke, Oliver Goldsmith, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and George Farquhar left Ireland and made their career in England. London was a wonderful opportunity to literary prosper.

Laurence Sterne, Oliver Goldsmith, Henry Brooke, Thomas Amory

Part two: 19th century novel

Maria Edgeworth- Elizabeth Bowen, Thomas Moore: satirist, Michael Bunim, Gerald Griffin

The great famine

A Cultural History of the Irish Novel, 1790–1829: Emerged new forms: the national tale, and historical novel- the 19th century novel is compared to either Joyce’s works or Victorian realism- the 19th century novels draw on and adapt …. -

The Anglo-Irish Novel and the Big House by Vera Kreilkamp: Crisis of representation, big house genre, relationship between landowners and tenants.

Part three: 20th century novel

William Trevor, John Banville, Brian Moore, Dermot Bolger, Roddy Doyle, Emma Donoghue, Patrick McCabe, Mary Morrissy, Robert McLiam Wilson.

Struggle for independence 1919- 1920 and the subsequent civil war

Reading the Modern British and Irish Novel 1890 – 1930 By Daniel R. Schwarz: they focus on the human psyche, stream of consciousness become prominent, the author’s struggle with his own self, telling becomes central action

Part four: 21st century novel

Work cited

Reading the Modern British and Irish Novel 1890 – 1930 By Daniel R. Schwarz

The Anglo-Irish Novel and the Big House by Vera Kreilkamp

A Cultural History of the Irish Novel, 1790–1829

‘Tomorrow we will change our names, invent ourselves again’: Irish fiction and autobiography since 1990 Liam Harte

Anne Enright and postnationalism in the contemporary Irish novel Heidi Hansson

‘Sacred spaces’: writing home in recent Irish memoirs and autobiographies (John McGahern’s Memoir, Hugo Hamilton’s The Speckled People, Seamus Deane’s Reading in the Dark and John Walsh’s The Falling Angels) Stephen Regan

Secret gardens: unearthing the truth in Patrick O’Keeffe’s The Hill Road Vivian Valvano Lynch

‘What’s it like being Irish?’ The return of the repressed in Roddy Doyle’s Paula Spencer Jennifer M. Jeffers

Remembering to forget: Northern Irish fiction after the Troubles Neal Alexander