Book reviews

MIDDLE EAST AND FAR EAST, Allan S. Walker, M.D., Ch.M., F.R.A.C.P. Published by the Australian War Memorial, Canberra. Obtainable at all booksellers, price 35/‐.

UNESCO, HUMANISM AND EDUCATION IN EAST AND WEST — Published in 1953 by the United Nations. 224 pages.

THE ALTERNATIVE (a dynamic approach to our relations with Asia). By John Burton, B.A., B.Ec., Ph.D., Sydney. Morgans Publications, 1954. PP. 116.

TING HSIEN — A North China Rural Community: By Sidney D. Gamble (Institute of Pacific Relations, New York, 1954). U.S. $6.50.

ZWISCHEN BEFREIUNG UND FREIHEIT. DER SONDERFALL OSTERREICH, by Karl Gruber. Verlag Ullstein. Wien, 1953.

AMERICAN ECONOMIC POLICY TOWARDS THE PHILIPPINES: By Shirley Jenkins — With an introduction by Claude A. Buss. Published under the auspices of the American Institute of Pacific Relations by Stanford University Press, California, 1954. P. 181.

THE ORIGINS OF PRUSSIA: By F. L. Carsten—Clarendon Press. Oxford, 1954. 309 pp., 1 map. (55/6 sterling).     

The Irish rent … and mended: transitional textual communities in nineteenth-century America

In this paper, traditional folkloric forms that were ritualised and practised in pre-Famine Ireland are examined. So, too, are the strategies that storytellers employed in disseminating the imaginative aspects of the oral tradition to their audiences. Following the disruption of the storytelling tradition precipitated by the Great Famine and emigration, the fabric of Irish storytelling lay threadbare, both in Ireland and abroad. Of interest is the fact that in America the less “heroic” and more subtle strands of Irish folklore resurfaced in the theatrical venues that developed during the second half of the nineteenth century, namely, minstrelsy, Vaudeville, and Tin Pan Alley. By the turn of twentieth century, the Irish were responding to other “heroic” depictions of themselves, not only with protestation but also with “tongue-in-cheek” laughter. Their grounding in a variety of folkloric texts in Ireland enabled them to transition to multiple kinds of accommodation and expressive resistance.