Hunger

Abstract: Hunger describes a physical sensation as well as a social phenomenon, and both have existed from time immemorial. There was hunger before the word; there was hunger, indeed, before words. This essay insists that, in the bilingual context of Ireland, English-language "keywords" can only ever offer a partial and incomplete understanding of cultural developments. It proceeds, however, to consider how hunger came to be a phenomenon associated, at home and abroad, with Ireland. Focusing on a few selected texts, this essay recovers attitudes to hunger in the 1840s; how it has been experienced, expressed, and politicized.