Importance of Identity in Anglo - Irish Literature in the Twentieth Century

“When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.”

    In the early twentieth century, Ireland, and more specifically Dublin, was a place defined by class distinctions. There were the wealthy, worldly upper-class who owned large, stately townhouses in the luxurious neighborhoods and the less fortunate, uneducated poor who lived in any shack they could afford in the middle of the city. For the most part, the affluent class was Protestant, while the struggling workers were overwhelmingly Catholic. These distinctions were the result of nearly a century of disparity in income, education, language, and occupation, and in turn were the fundamental bases for the internal struggle that many of Joyce's characters feel.

The start of the Irish’ peoples struggles began when the British came and destroyed their way of life. The Penal laws of 1691 stripped Irish Catholics of their freedoms by taking away their rights to become officers

As people today enjoy “being Irish” on St. Patrick’s Day, back in the day the Irish were not well-received. Hundreds of years of oppression by Anglo-Saxons in Britain followed them to America and Irish were portrayed in cartoons as “ape-like Celts” while caricature images depicted the British race as “men of genius” (Mendible Lecture Notes). In her Afterword to Mary Doyle Curran’s novel, The Parish and the Hill, Anne Halley addresses former assumptions stating the Irish were distrusted first because of their religion and second because they may not be loyal to the American ideal: “They were Catholic – a religion thought to be based upon superstition and controlled by priests and a foreign power, the Papacy, that demanded absolute loyalty; potentially subversive of Protestant America […] they might never put America first” (Curran 226). Many Irish left after The Great Famine in 1846 immigrating as free citizens or indentured servants. Those arriving in Boston, New York or Philadelphia became the usurpers of free Blacks’ employment opportunities. Because they would work for lower pay, and they resembled “whites,” Irish families dislodged free blacks from their place in that society. In How the Irish Became

In A Modest Proposal, Swift vents his mounting exacerbation at the incompetence of Ireland's government officials, the pietism of the affluent, the oppression of the English, and the lack of sanitization and debasement in which he sees such a variety of Irish individuals living. While A Modest Proposal moans about the dreary circumstance of an Ireland absolutely subject to England's misuse, it likewise communicates Swift's absolute sicken at the Irish individuals' appearing failure to activate all alone sake. Without pardoning any gathering, the paper demonstrates that the English as well as the Irish themselves- - and the Irish lawmakers as well as the masses- - are in charge of the country's disastrous state. His sympathy for the wretchedness of the Irish individuals is a serious one, and he incorporates a scrutinize of their ineptitude in managing their own particular issues.

Brittany Clair Smith English 250: British Literary Tradition I Restoration Paper Instructor: Ashley Goulder December 3, 2014 Traditional Irish Recipes Dr. Jonathan Swifts ‘Modest Proposal’ implies that he has a grand idea to help and empower the down trotted Irish people while they adjust to their English rulers. The main idea of his proposal was, “for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland from being a burden to their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the public (Norton 2473). " The idea sounds pleasant and innovating when depicted in such a manner.

Identity is pivotal to the story and holds its own innate power, but what is even more pivotal is that the Irish do not necessarily all share the same views. The Irish find their history very important because it is the foundation of the language. Hugh says, “It is not the literal past, the ‘facts’ of history, that shape us, but images of the past embodied in language” (88). It is evident then that Hugh finds the historical meanings of

This small step to independence by a group of dissenters was able to use the built heritage site of Tara to invoke within the Irish people a sense of their lost traditionalism and new found fervor for nationalism (Laurence, 2008, p.159). Nevertheless, the continual dominance of British rule saw no substantial social and economic changes for Catholics as they were still”steeped in habitual misery” (Finn & Lynch, 1995, p.24).

The Irish had suffered long before in the hands of the English when Cromwell had been in control and had taken away land held by the catholic majority of the country to members of the protestant minority. This created a large tension among the population with the oppressed majority and the rather entitled minority who by Trevelyan’s snooty tone did indeed see themselves as the superior people in the country. (Trevelyan’s tone is probably the most dismissive when in discussion of the Irish, mayhaps showing his own true dislike.) (Trevelyan, p. 116-

Ireland is a country that is rich in culture, traditions, and faith. This country has struggled with over time with famine, religious tension, and even freedom. Many individuals immigrated to America in search of a better life. The person I chose to interview family came over to the United States when Ireland was struggling with famine. They came over on a boat through New York and changed there name to make it more American. For this paper I will further discuss the Irish culture and the person I interviewed.

In the accumulation of short stories in "Dubliners," James Joyce presents a mosaic of the everyday existences of average workers Irishmen and their own battles with the pre-free societal and individual confinements of Victorian England. The characters of Little Chandler, Eveline, Maria, and Farrington symbolize the particular segments of the multicolored Irish populace and their all inclusive propensity to remain contained inside the cutoff points of the present day and age and inside the constraints of their general public. Regardless of life giving them chances to enhance or change their living conditions, these individuals are not prepared to proceed onward and are choked by their uncertainty, their conviction framework, and their generalizations.

Discuss Home Rule as a force of unity and division in Irish political life during the period 1886 to 1921.

Relationships with community, family and between male and female are a constant source of inspiration for Irish writers. Discuss with reference to examples from three genres.

At the time of publication, 1916, Ireland had seen events such as The 'Easter Rising ' in which Catholics rebelled against the British and the Protestants in a bid for independence. This mix of both the need for Independence and religious extremism are elements that we see portratyed through Stephen. Knowing this information we can see that Joyce portrays not only his own struggles with religion and independence using this method but also the conflict found

The best example of such case is a crucial for the movement involvement of Lady Augusta Gregory whose works and translations enriched immensely the Irish literature. Similarly, William Butler Yeats and John Synge, both had Protestant Anglo-Irish backround. Greene and Stephens describe it in words: “one of the ironies of the Irish Literary Revival was that it was founded by people whose origins were not Celtic and whose knowledge of the tradition they were attempting to identify themselves with was slight indeed” (1959:97). Used as main themes in vast amount of literature from that time, Celtic tradition and Irish situation were frequently simply an inspiration for creating works, however with time they began to be exploited for nationalistic purposes, regardless of the original intention of the