An Irish Party and the British Parliament: Conor Cruise O'Brien's Parnell and His Party

This essay reassesses the importance of Conor Cruise O'Brien's Parnell and His Party, 1880–90, originally published in 1957, with particular reference to its significance in the history of the British parliament. While establishing the book's continuing relevance, both as a study of a specific political phenomenon and as a model for analysing political movements, the essay questions aspects which do not hold up in the light of subsequent research. In particular, O'Brien's account and interpretation of Parnell's behaviour in 1890–1 in the aftermath of the O'Shea divorce case is shown to be inadequate in the light of more recent research and writing.     

Divided sisterhood? Nationalist feminism and feminist militancy in England and Ireland

ABSTRACT

The generally accepted story is that British militant suffragists performed an unexpected and abrupt move away from the feminist movement and towards a fiercely jingoistic nationalist campaign once the war began in 1914. Yet, given the nature of exchanges between Irish and British militant feminists, Irish feminists should not have been surprised by this turn from gender solidarity to English nationalism. In this article, I argue that Irish-British militant feminist entanglements worked to expose the powerful role that English nationalism played in suffrage politics at a time when nearly all the focus was on the disruptive influence of Irish nationalism.     

W. B. Yeats,the Abbey Theatre,and the Cinema, 1909–1939

ABSTRACT

Given the significance of new technologies to the literary and visual cultures of the early-twentieth century, it is surprising how little has been written about W. B. Yeats and cinema. Viewed by some scholars as emphatically resistant to what he termed “the leprosy of the modern,” Yeats has long been a difficult writer to situate in relation the progressive impulses of modernity. Building on Kevin Rockett’s identification of the parallels between the work of Abbey Theatre and a nascent Irish cinema culture, this article argues that Yeats played a prominent role in early attempts to develop an indigenous film industry, and to cultivate representations of Ireland on screen abroad. During the period I consider, the Abbey Theatre and the film industry were similarly affected by state censorship programmes and various forms of cultural nationalism. Exploring the Abbey Theatre Minute Books and archival materials discovered in Trinity College Dublin, I suggest that Yeats’s Abbey was a shaping force in Irish cinema history, despite the fact that most attempts to create a national cinema met with limited success.     

Playing for Ireland in foreign fields: the Gaelic Athletic Association and Irish nationalism in America

With a few exceptions, the existing scholarship on the relationship between the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) and Irish nationalism has largely overlooked the experiences of the Irish diaspora. This article seeks to redress this neglect by exploring the ways in which Irish nationalism has historically been produced, reproduced and contested amongst members of the GAA in the USA. In light of their status as focal points of Irish immigration and as centres of Gaelic games activity in America, the article focuses on the cities of Boston, New York, Chicago and San Francisco. It draws on extensive archival and interview research conducted in each locale since 2000 and reveals that while intensely politicised and ethnic versions of Irish nationalism have historically weaved their way through US branches of the Association, since the mid-1990s there have been a number of socio-economic and political developments both in Ireland and in America that have seen the GAA begin to articulate a more civic, less ethnically bounded version of Irish nationalism.     

“Oh,what matter,when for Erin dear we fall?”: music and Irish nationalism, 1848–1913

Between the failed uprising of the Irish Confederacy in 1848 and the formation of the Irish Volunteers in 1913, music was a constant presence in the political life of Ireland. Physical force and constitutional nationalists alike found ample use for music, commemorating the martyrs of nationalism, intimidating opponents and expressing shared ideologies. Nationalist music was a regular feature at political rallies, at funerals and during elections, allowing parliamentary nationalists such as Charles Stewart Parnell to associate their cause with more radical ideals. This article employs a combination of historical and ethnomusicological methods in an analysis of songbooks, memoirs, oral histories and contemporary documents to reconstruct the nature and function of musical culture in nationalist politics between 1848 and 1913.     

“Much the more political of the two”: Mabel FitzGerald and the Irish revolution

This article offers an assessment of the career and ideology of the Irish republican and Cumann na mBan activist Mabel FitzGerald, née McConnell (1884–1958). From a staunchly Unionist Belfast Presbyterian family, Mabel converted to republicanism while an undergraduate in the early 1900s. In 1911 she eloped with Desmond FitzGerald, a Catholic poet. The couple became prominent nationalist activists, and participated in the Easter Rising. In 1922 Desmond, now a minister in the provisional government, supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty. This caused a rift with Mabel, who remained a republican. Although she chose not to separate from her husband, she retained her republican sympathies; there is evidence that she continued to offer aid to the anti-Treaty side. After the Civil War, Mabel and Desmond were reconciled, and she strongly revised her political views, eventually coming to regret the Irish separatist project. Mabel FitzGerald’s career offers insight into the nature of radicalisation among Irish nationalist activists, as well as providing an example of the competing loyalties of family and politics that frequently informed and constrained the actions of nationalist activists.     

Constructions of Australia in pro‐ and anti‐asylum seeker political discourse

ABSTRACT. Whilst there has been a proliferation of research on the role of nationalism in the exclusion of asylum seekers, less attention has been paid to how nationalism can be mobilised in accounts opposing, rather than supporting, harsh anti‐asylum seeker regimes. This paper compares the ways in which ‘Australia’ is constructed and used in parliamentary speeches on asylum seekers by both refugee advocates and those seeking harsher asylum seeker laws in Australia. This dual focus is particularly important as it highlights the flexibility of nationalist discourse, in that the same constructions of the nation may be used for both exclusive and inclusive purposes. Whilst typologies of inclusive and exclusive nationalisms, such as Smith's (1991) ethnic/civic typology, focus on the content of nationalist ideologies, we argue that the inclusivity or exclusivity of nationalism can best be determined by examining the subject positions, political solutions and social realities they make possible, and who these discourses benefit and oppress.     

Gaeltacht Thuaisceart an Oileáin Úir: post-territorial Irishness and Canadian multiculturalism

In 2007 a remarkable development for the Irish language outside of Ireland took place. A dedicated space for speaking and learning the language was established in Ontario, Canada, now known as Gaeltacht Thuaisceart an Oileáin Úir. While the adoption of the term ‘Gaeltacht’ may be controversial in an allochthonous context, this site is sustained by a diasporic community that endeavours to preserve an Irish cultural identity through learning and speaking the language. This paper presents the results of fieldwork conducted among Irish-language learners in Canada who have invested time and resources to establish a permanent space for the language. Data retrieved through an online survey reveal that the language serves as a vehicle for those wishing to maintain or connect with an Irish cultural identity, as well as for those outside of the diaspora who learn the language for other social, professional or educational purposes. Notably, such narratives are perfectly at ease within a modern, multicultural Canada.     

Romanticism,music, nationalism

In manifold ways, the stylistic and performative features and evolving genre conventions of nineteenth‐century ‘classical’ music reflect the increasing grip of nationalism on cultural attitudes in Europe. Conversely, music could become an important medium for the expression and dissemination of nationalist ideals. A cross‐national, European‐wide survey of this interpenetration between musical and ideological developments is applied towards a tentative typological outline of ‘musical nationalism’.     

(Re)Hibernicising Wilde? A genetic analysis of The Picture of Dorian Gray

The controversy surrounding the integrity and originality of Harvard University Press’s unexpurgated version of Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray in 2011 has underlined the timeliness and necessity of further genetic critique of Wilde’s only novel and attendant ephemera. By undertaking a genetic reading of the three versions of this text now available to us, this article examines how Wilde’s letters, poetry, lectures and reviews that precede the novel reveal an intensification of Wilde’s nationalism and anti-imperialism in the run-up to its publication. In particular, the article uncovers the differing impact of the Parnell scandal and the Land Wars on the different versions of the novel and also reads the abject scenes of imperial predation set in the London docks as Wilde’s meditation on Ireland’s contested colonial status within the UK and the global system of exploitation driving “The Great Game” of Empire per se.     

Reframing the “Irish Question”: the role of the Irish co-operative movement in the formation of Irish nationalism, 1900–22

This article examines the role of the Irish co-operative movement in the early twentieth century and argues that it played a crucial role in shaping a popular understanding of the “Irish Question”. This mass-membership movement impacted upon the development of the Irish state and population. By taking this rural, social movement as a lens to analyse Irish society in the early twentieth century, social and economic issues re-emerge as central components to a contemporary understanding of Ireland's increasingly contested position within the Union. As the expectation of some kind of political resolution to demands for political independence grew during the First World War, radical nationalism absorbed a social and economic discourse that originated within the co-operative movement in its critique of the British state as it operated in Ireland. Irish co-operation represented a sophisticated form of political economy that provided an influential ideological platform for Irish nationalists as they anticipated some form of political independence.     

Idealisations of self and nation in the thought of diaspora intellectuals

ABSTRACT. Diaspora intellectuals have often played prominent roles in the formation of national revival and independence movements. This article explores the factors that may help to explain this phenomenon through a survey of the literary responses of intellectuals from Eastern Europe, colonial Africa and Asia to their experiences in the capital cities of Western Europe over the early modern and modern era. These reactions, expressed through the writings of influential figures such as Adamantios Koraes and Leopold Senghor, reveal, in their thematic convergence, aspects of such encounters that have remained consistent over time. Portrayed throughout are the emotional hardships of talented individuals who found their status suddenly conditioned by the ideas associated with their places of origin in the host society's imagination. Unwilling, for reasons explored below, to submit passively to these affronts, the individuals studied here threw their energies instead into ambitious projects of national re‐imagination and rehabilitation. The article makes use, finally, of the rather visceral quality of the literature surrounding the experience of diaspora intellectuals to account for the complex weave of modern and traditional elements often exhibited in the new idealisations of self and nation that appear throughout their works.