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The Irish Literary Revival (also called the Irish Literary Renaissance, sometimes nicknamed the Celtic Twilight though this has a broader meaning) was a flowering of Irish literary talent in the late 19th and early 20th century. It includes works of poetry, music, art, and literature.
The early literary revival had two geographic centres, in Dublin and in London, and William Butler Yeats travelled between the two, writing and organising. In 1888 he published Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry, a compilation of pieces by various authors of the 18th and 19th centuries.[2] He had been assisted by Douglas Hyde, whose Beside the Fire, a collection of folklore in Irish, was published in 1890. In London in 1892, along with T. W. Rolleston, and Charles Gavan Duffy, he set up the Irish Literary Society. Back in Dublin he founded the National Literary Society in the same year, with Douglas Hyde as first President. Meanwhile, the more radical Arthur Griffith and William Rooney were active in the Irish Fireside Club and went on to found the Leinster Literary Society.[3]
In 1893 Yeats published The Celtic Twilight, a collection of lore and reminiscences from the West of Ireland. The book closed with the poem "Into the Twilight". It was this book and poem that gave the revival its nickname. In this year Hyde, Eugene O'Growney and Eoin MacNeill founded the Gaelic League, with Hyde becoming its first President. It was set up to encourage the preservation of Irish culture, its music, dances and language. Also in that year appeared Hyde's The Love Songs of Connacht, which inspired Yeats, John Millington Synge and Lady Gregory.[4]
Thomas A. Finlay founded the New Ireland Review, a literary magazine, in 1894, which he edited until 1911, when it was replaced by Studies. Many of the leading literary lights of the time contributed to it.[5]
In 1897 Hyde became editor, with T. W. Rolleston and Charles Gavan Duffy, of the New Irish Library, a series of books on Irish history and literature issued by the London publisher, Fisher Unwin. Two years later Hyde published his Literary history of Ireland.
Yeats, Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn published a Manifesto for Irish Literary Theatre in 1897, in which they proclaimed their intention of establishing a national theatre for Ireland. The Irish Literary Theatre (ILT) was founded by Yeats, Lady Gregory and Martyn in 1899, with assistance from George Moore. It proposed to give performances in Dublin of Irish plays by Irish authors.[6]
In February 1901, at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin, the ILT performed “The Last Feast of the Fianna”, a one-act depiction of an episode in the tale of Oisin. It was the work of the Gaelic League activist, Alice Milligan. Lady Gregory found the lack of action and long soliloquies "intolerable" and the overall effect "tawdry".[7] But it was a first attempt "to dramatize Celtic Legend for an Irish audience".[8]
Around the turn of the century Patrick S. Dinneen published editions of Geoffrey Keating's Foras Feasa ar Éirinn, poems by Aogán Ó Rathaille and Piaras Feiritéar, and other works for the Irish Texts Society and the Gaelic League. He then went on to write the first novel in Irish, while continuing to work on his great Irish-English dictionary.[9] On Easter Sunday 1900 Yeats' friend and muse, Maud Gonne, founded Inghinidhe na hÉireann (English: Daughters of Ireland), a revolutionary women's society which included writers Alice Furlong, Annie Egan, Ethna Carbery and Sinéad O'Flanagan (later wife of Éamon de Valera), and the actors Máire Quinn and Sara Allgood. The Irish-language newspaper Banba was founded in 1901 with Tadhg Ó Donnchadha as editor. The following year he also became editor of the Gaelic Journal.
In 1906 the publishing house of Maunsel and Company was founded by Stephen Gwynn, Joseph Maunsel Hone and George Roberts to publish Irish writers. Its first publication was Rush-light by Joseph Campbell.[12] Lady Gregory started publishing her collection of Kiltartan stories, including A Book of Saints and Wonders (1906) and The Kiltartan History Book (1909).
The Irish Review was founded in 1910 by Professor David Houston of the Royal College of Science for Ireland, with his friends poet Thomas MacDonagh, lecturer in English in University College Dublin, poet and writer James Stephens, with David Houston, Thomas MacDonagh, Padraic Colum and Mary Colum and Joseph Mary Plunkett. The magazine was edited by Thomas MacDonagh for its first issues, then Padraic Colum, then, changing its character utterly from a literary and sociological magazine, Joseph Plunkett edited its final issues as literary Ireland became involved with the Irish Volunteers and plans for the Easter Rising. Plunkett published a collection of poems, The Circle and The Sword, the same year.
Aos sí is the Irish name for a supernatural race in Celtic mythology – daoine sìth in Scottish Gaelic – comparable to fairies or elves. They are said to descend from the Tuatha Dé Danann, meaning the "People of Danu", depending on the Abrahamic or pagan tradition.
The Abbey Theatre, also known as the National Theatre of Ireland, in Dublin, Ireland, is one of the country's leading cultural institutions. First opening to the public on 27 December 1904, and moved from its original building after a fire in 1951, it has remained active to the present day. The Abbey was the first state-subsidized theatre in the English-speaking world; from 1925 onwards it received an annual subsidy from the Irish Free State. Since July 1966, the Abbey has been located at 26 Lower Abbey Street, Dublin 1.
Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory was an Anglo-Irish dramatist, folklorist and theatre manager. With William Butler Yeats and Edward Martyn, she co-founded the Irish Literary Theatre and the Abbey Theatre, and wrote numerous short works for both companies. Lady Gregory produced a number of books of retellings of stories taken from Irish mythology. Born into a class that identified closely with British rule, she turned against it. Her conversion to cultural nationalism, as evidenced by her writings, was emblematic of many of the political struggles to occur in Ireland during her lifetime.
The Celtic Revival is a variety of movements and trends in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries that see a renewed interest in aspects of Celtic culture. Artists and writers drew on the traditions of Gaelic literature, Welsh-language literature, and so-called 'Celtic art'—what historians call Insular art. Although the revival was complex and multifaceted, occurring across many fields and in various countries in Northwest Europe, its best known incarnation is probably the Irish Literary Revival. Irish writers including William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory, "Æ" Russell, Edward Martyn, Alice Milligan and Edward Plunkett stimulated a new appreciation of traditional Irish literature and Irish poetry in the late 19th and early 20th century.
The Gaelic revival was the late-nineteenth-century national revival of interest in the Irish language and Irish Gaelic culture. Irish had diminished as a spoken tongue, remaining the main daily language only in isolated rural areas, with English having become the dominant language in the majority of Ireland.
Thomas Stanislaus MacDonagh was an Irish political activist, poet, playwright, educationalist and revolutionary leader. He was one of the seven leaders of the Easter Rising of 1916, a signatory of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic and Commandant of the 2nd Battalion, Dublin Brigade of the Irish Volunteers, which fought in Jacob's biscuit factory. He was executed for his part in the Rising at the age of thirty-eight.
Padraic Colum was an Irish poet, novelist, dramatist, biographer, playwright, children's author and collector of folklore. He was one of the leading figures of the Irish Literary Revival.
W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn published a "Manifesto for Irish Literary Theatre" in 1897, in which they proclaimed their intention of establishing a national theatre for Ireland.
The Cuala Press was an Irish private press set up in 1908 by Elizabeth Yeats with support from her brother William Butler Yeats that played an important role in the Celtic Revival of the early 20th century. Originally Dun Emer Press, from 1908 until the late 1940s it functioned as Cuala Press, publicising the works of such writers as Yeats, Lady Gregory, Colum, Synge, and Gogarty.
Alice Letitia Milligan [pseud. Iris Olkyrn] was an Irish writer and activist in Ireland's Celtic Revival; an advocate for the political and cultural participation of women; and a Protestant-unionist convert to the cause of Irish independence. She was at the height of her renown at the turn of the 20th century when in Belfast, with Anna Johnston, she produced the political and literary monthly The Shan Van Vocht (1896–1899), and when in Dublin the Irish Literary Theatre's performed "The Last Feast of the Fianna” (1900), Milligan's interpretation of Celtic legend as national drama.
Events from the year 1893 in Ireland.
Standish James O'Grady was an Irish author, journalist, and historian. O'Grady was inspired by Sylvester O'Halloran and played a formative role in the Celtic Revival, publishing the tales of Irish mythology, as the History of Ireland: Heroic Period (1878), arguing that the Gaelic tradition had rival only from the tales of Homeric Greece. O'Grady was a paradox for his times, proud of his Gaelic heritage, he was also a member of the Church of Ireland, a champion of aristocratic virtues and at one point advocated a revitalised Irish people taking over the British Empire and renaming it the Anglo-Irish Empire.
The Faber Book of Irish Verse was a poetry anthology edited by John Montague and first published in 1974 by Faber and Faber. Recognised as an important collection, it has been described as 'the only general anthology of Irish verse in the past 30 years that has a claim to be a work of art in itself ... still the freshest introduction to the full range of Irish poetry'. According to Montague, "I'm dealing with a thousand years of Irish verse in under four hundred pages. I needed a thousand pages.'
The Oxford Book of Irish Verse; XVIIth century - XXth century was a poetry anthology edited by Donagh MacDonagh and Lennox Robinson. It was published "at the Clarendon Press, Oxford" in 1958.
Mary Catherine Gunning Colum was an Irish literary critic and author, who also co-founded a literary journal.
Cuchulain of Muirthemne is a version of the Cú Chulainn legends based on previous oral and written versions, as collected and translated by Lady Augusta Gregory. First published in 1902, it is one of the earliest such collections to appear in English. The book covers the lifespan of the hero, from conception to death, and draws on folklore and oral tradition in addition to the stories of the Ulster Cycle.
Máire Nic Shiubhlaigh was an Irish actress and republican activist. She started acting in her teens and appeared in the first Irish-language play performed in Ireland. She was a founder-member of the Abbey Theatre and was leading lady on its opening night in 1904, when she played the title role in W.B. Yeats's Cathleen Ni Houlihan. She later joined the Theatre of Ireland, which she helped to found.
The Irish Literary Society was founded in London in 1892 by William Butler Yeats, T. W. Rolleston ,and Charles Gavan Duffy. Members of the Southwark Irish Literary Club met in Clapham Reform Club and changed the name early in the year. On 13 February they met again to form a committee. Evelyn Gleeson became secretary. Stopford Brooke gave the inaugural lecture to the society, on "The Need and Use of Getting Irish Literature into the English Tongue".
Helen Laird (1874–1957), was an Irish actress also known as ‘Honor Lavelle’, a costumier, teacher, and feminist.
References
↑ Boyd, Ernest (23 December 1916). "The Irish Literary Revival". The Irish Times. p.3.
↑ Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry, ed. by W. B. Yeats (London: Walter Scott, [1888]).
↑ McGuire, James; Quinn, James (2009). Dictionary of Irish Biography. Vol.V. Dublin: Royal Irish Academy-Cambridge University Press. p.608. ISBN978-0-521-63331-4.
↑ Ó Corráin, Donnchadh. "Douglas Hyde". University College Cork, Multitext Project in Irish History. Archived from the original on 1 October 2011. Retrieved 20 August 2011.
↑ Remport, Eglantina (2018). Lady Gregory and the Irish National Theatre. Palgrave Macmillan. p.75. ISBN9783030095345.
↑ Feeney, William (1967). Maeve: A Psychological Drama in Two Acts by Edward Martyn, the last Feast of the Fianna,: a Dramatic Legend by Alice Milligan. Chicago: De Paul University Press. p.45.
↑ Welch, Robert (1996). The Concise Oxford Companion to Irish Literature. Oxford University Press. ISBN0-19-280080-9.
↑ McCormack, W. J. (ed.). The Blackwell Companion to Modern Irish Culture, Blackwell Publishing, 28 January 2002. p.7. ISBN0-631-22817-9
↑ Carens, James (1979). Surpassing Wit. New York: Columbia University Press. p.22.
↑ John Kelly, Ronald Schuchard: The Collected Letters of W.B. Yeats, 1905–1907 (2005). Oxford University Press. p. 87
↑ Report (15 September 1913). "Irish Artists "At Home"". The Irish Times. p.9.
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