The article undertakes an analysis of the Middle Irish prosimetric tale Buile Suibhne in the light of the current cultural resignification of the Irish-language tradition from a resource for nation-building to a locus of inspiration for modern ecological thought. The general theoretical framework is provided by Timothy Morton's concepts of "ecology without nature," "strange stranger," and especially "uncanny intimacy." The article contends that while many early Irish treatments of nature display features of the pastoral mode, favourably comparing idealised nature to civilisation, Buile Suibhne remains ambiguous in this respect. In addition, the tale contains exceptional passages where the main character blends into the environment in a disquieting, although often sympathising way. A possible explanation for the unique features of the text is the fact that it creatively combines material from various sources.

SE & Aacute;N MAC MATH & Uacute;NA certainly stands as one of the most versatile authors in Irish today, a writer who has enjoyed success over the course of five decades in a number of literary genres, including novels, youth literature, and plays. Purely in terms of quantity, short stories for adults form only a moderate part of his output; apart from his two collections Ding agus Sc & eacute;alta Eile (Wedge and Other Stories; 1983) and Banana (1999), we can find one additional story in the selection & Uacute;lla (Apples; 2005) and several others (including very recent ones) published in Comhar but yet not in book form.' In spite of that Mac Mathuna can be regarded as an important short-story writer as he has thought deeply about the nature of the form and, in his best stories, left his distinctive mark on it. This article explores the various ways in which he uses the short story in its realist, allegorical, and magical-realist permutations to comment upon the situation of the Irish language as well as social, political, and spiritual life in Ireland.

The role of the composer Sean O Riada (1931-1971) in the development of Irish traditional music offers abundant paradoxes. On the one hand, he was a modernist inspired by Arnold Schoenberg, on the other hand, a die-hard traditionalist who praised Irish music for retaining its basic shape for more than two thousand years. His nationalism as well as his contradicting opinions were often renounced by later critics. The essay focuses on O Riada's radio programme Our Musical Heritage (1962) and analyses his statements in the light of his own work and as well as later developments in Irish traditional music. It shows that he often did not aim at an objective description, but rather offered "performative" gestures that delimited the genre against other musical styles and, under a mask of conservatism, laid foundations for its later development, which has proceeded very rapidly since the 1960s. A good example is O Riada's discussion of the bodhran - the claim about the pre-Christian origins of the drum only conceals the fact that he was one of the first musicians to use it to accompany Irish dancing tunes. Nationalist mystique aside, some findings and metaphors of O Riada's still hold, such as his description of the cyclical, "fractal" structure of Irish music, or its image as a flowing river that absorbs outside influences. O Riada's various opinions are analysed through theories of authenticity developed by Timothy D. Taylor and Rina Schiller.

This article explores the consequences that the conditions of incarceration have on the linguistic make-up of literary texts that result from or reflect on them. Due to the island’s colonial history, Ireland has a rich canon of confinement literature, but – largely as a result of this very same history – these literary works have often been studied through a binary cultural lens, reinforcing what Declan Kiberd has termed the ‘quarantine’ of Ireland’s literatures, with English kept on one side of the language fence, Irish on the other. Drawing on Ian O’Donnell and Eoin O’Sullivan’s concept of ‘coercive confinement’ in order to include carceral institutions outside the formal criminal justice system, this article examines four case studies in which Irish writers cross the borders of language quarantine when writing about coercive confinement, focusing on selected works by Máirtín Ó Cadhain, Brendan Behan, Seamus Heaney and Melatu Uche Okorie. Just as the conditions of confinement that gave rise to these works differ widely, so too do the literary strategies employed to represent or respond to these situations of incarceration. While Ireland’s literary languages have historically existed in quarantine, we hope to show that this linguistic confinement is often breached by Irish writers responding to actual instances of imprisonment. Keywords: coercive confinement; language; internment; prison; borstal; direct provision; heteroglossia; translation

Mairtin Cadhain's Cre na Cille (1949), generally praised as the best Irish-language novel of all time, has recently attracted considerable attention thanks to the publication of its two English translations in 2015 and 2016. In the course of the following year, German, Dutch and Czech versions of the novel appeared. This article briefly discusses the question of why this momentous novel waited so long to be translated and sets the context for the recent outburst of translation activity. Then it analyses some of the choices that lay before its Czech translator. With reference to both literary theory and literary history, this article describes the reasons for rendering the earthy talk of most of the graveyard's inhabitants in Common Czech, as opposed to Standard Czech or a more specific dialect. In addition, it comments on some of the more particular decisions made, often in comparison with the other available translations.

AbstractIn part because the Gate explored an experimental dramaturgy, its artistic directors Micheál mac Liammóir and Hilton Edwards often wrote, spoke and advocated for a drama that could move beyond realism. The analysis of Hilton Edwards’s dramatic commentary reaches from his early articles on dramaturgy right up to his encounter with the Berliner Ensemble in 1956 that influenced Edwards’s most elaborate statement on drama, The Mantle of Harlequin (1958). An important part of Edwards’s vision was his cosmopolitanism, his refusal to view drama within a restricted national framework. Nationality, on the other hand, was more important for the self-styled Irishman Micheál mac Liammóir. On close inspection, however, we find that his outlook did not differ much from Edwards’s. Mac Liammóir’s main concern was for Irish(-language) drama to absorb elements from abroad, to escape the straitjacket of Abbey realism and to become distinctive in a global context.

Rather than reaffirming An Béal Bocht’s status as a parody of other Irish-language texts, Radvan Markus bridges the gap between An Béal Bocht as Gaelic satire and the postmodernism of O’Nolan’s English-language novels At Swim-Two-Birds and The Third Policeman. The essay explores the influence of German pre-Romantic and Romantic philosophers, such as Johann Gottfried Herder and Wilhelm von Humboldt, on the language revival movements which swept through Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. Markus’s essay thus places O’Nolan’s works in Irish into a productive critical dialogue with continental philosophies of language and cultural identity. In doing so, Markus argues that An Béal Bocht exhibits many of the same literary and linguistic postmodern tropes found in O’Nolan’s English-language novels: ‘An Béal Bocht should be regarded as an important precursor to postmodernism in exactly the same way as O’Nolan’s English writing is nowadays seen.’

In common perception, the Irish Literary Revival and the Gaelic Revival often appear as essentially unrelated movements, divided by language and with little in common. The essay points to deeper similarities between them on the basis of two of their prominent representatives, the renowned playwright John Millington Synge (1871–1909) and the Irish-language prose writer Pádraic Ó Conaire (1882–1928). It takes into account instances of direct influence of Synge on Ó Conaire, but the main focus is on the reflection of various streams of European thought in the oeuvres of both authors. The most important are late legacies of Romanticism, which include the emphasis on artistic individuality, the celebration of wild nature, and an interest in people on the margins of society. Also the influences of realism, naturalism and incipient modernism are discussed. The correspondences between both prominent authors assume surprisingly concrete forms and testify to the need to study modern Irish literature in both languages side by side. John Millington Synge a Pádraic Ó Conaire: nečekaní souputníci mezi romantismem, realismem a dalšími směry Irské literární obrození, jehož výsledkem byla díla v angličtině, a obrození jazykové, jež oživovalo literaturu v irštině, se i přes časovou a místní souvislost obecně považují za dvě antagonistická hnutí s málo styčnými body. Článek poukazuje na hlubší souvislosti mezi oběma směry na příkladu srovnání životů a děl dvou jejich významných představitelů – světoznámého dramatika Johna Millingtona Synga (1871–1909) a nejlepšího prozaika jazykového obrození Pádraica Ó Conaireho (1882–1928). Všímá si příkladů Syngova vlivu na Ó Conaireho, ale jeho hlavním těžištěm je zpracování odrazů evropských myšlenkových směrů v díle obou autorů. Jako nejdůležitější se jeví pozdní vliv romantismu, který oba vedl k důrazu na individualitu autora, k oslavě krásy divoké přírody i k zájmu o lidi na okraji společnosti, jako jsou tuláci, slepci či šílenci. Oba literáti byli také nekompromisní realisté, kteří si všímali stinných stránek častokrát idealizovaného života na západě Irska a neváhali poukázat na jeho lokální příčiny. Mezi další vlivy se pak řadí naturalismus a počínající modernismus, jejichž zpracováním Synge a Ó Conaire ukázali cestu pozdějším spisovatelům. Souvislosti mezi oběma významnými autory nabývají překvapivě konkrétních forem a poukazují na potřebu studovat moderní irskou literaturu v irštině a angličtině společně.

"Níl an Focal Sin Againn":Orality, Literacy, and Accounts of the 1798 Rebellion Radvan Markus The rebellion of 1798, together with the decade immediately preceding it, is commonly regarded as a crucial period in Irish history, vitally important for the forming of Irish national identity. Despite its tragic outcome, this period of political turmoil brought into close contact, and conflict, various groups of the Irish population that, owing to a rigid political system, lived in separate worlds and had relatively little understanding of each other.1 This dramatically changed in the 1790s. The political project of the United Irishmen—famously expressed by Wolfe Tone's words "to substitute the common name of Irishman, in the place of the denominations of Protestant, Catholic, and Dissenter"—and the necessities of conspiracy and military organization required intensive communication between all levels of Irish society. The involvement of French soldiers, although of limited military impact, in the Connacht episode of the rebellion can also be seen as significant in the context of this cultural interchange. The groups involved have been commonly described in terms of religion (Catholics versus Protestants), economic status (landowners versus tenants), language (Irish versus English ), nationality, and historical background. Yet, another dimension—the dichotomy of orality and literacy—may also prove useful in the description of cultural differences in the period of the rebellion, and in the analysis of its reflections in historiography and literature. [End Page 112] Since the publication of Milman Parry's analysis of Homeric epics in 1928, and with increasing intensity since the 1960s, the attention of many scholars has been drawn to the ways that different kinds of "technologizing of the word" through writing, print, and electronic communication deeply affect the users of these systems to the extent that they "restructure their consciousness."2 This scholarship has established a crucial contrast between oral and literate cultures and distinguished various stages in the development of the latter, marked by the interiorization of print and electronic communication. A great degree of attention has been devoted to "primary oral cultures," which never came under the influence of writing.3 The analysis of such cultures provides an opportunity to illuminate the changes that writing had imposed on contemporary Western culture. That analysis has been carried on various texts seen to bear traces of oral composition—the Homeric epics, Beowulf, parts of the Bible—as well as on cultures that have until recently retained a significant degree of orality, such as those of Native Americans, certain African cultures, and some Central Asian nations. On the basis of these findings, notable differences have been postulated between primary oral and highly literate cultures. An exhaustive summary of these differences can be found in Walter J. Ong's influential Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (1982). The dichotomy of orality and literacy may also prove a relevant tool in the interpretation of the rebellion of 1798, a process that started with the historical actors themselves and has continued in historiography, politics, and literature to this day.4 The concepts of orality and literacy can play an analytical role, especially when considering the opinions and motivations of Irish-speaking participants in the rising. Issues of orality and literacy also arise prominently in two historical novels from the twentieth century, both concentrating on the Connacht episode of the 1798 rebellion. Traditionally regarded as derived from and secondary to historiography, historical fiction may seem an unusual source; yet, it can be argued that the points of view adopted by the two authors in question throw an interesting light on the problem. This view of historical fiction and drama is supported by contemporary theories of historiography, most notably by Hayden White in Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (1973) [End Page 113] and Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (1978).5 In these seminal theoretical works, White draws attention to the process of selection and construction inevitably present in any rendition of history, and brings to light important structural similarities between historiography and fiction. White's critics are right in maintaining that there still exists a relatively well-defined border between these two discourses.6 Nonetheless, his theory has opened a way...