Islandman translated: Tomas O'Crohan, autobiography and the politics of culture
The writings of Tomas O’Crohan in the early twentieth century were celebrated upon publication as icons of Irishness and the voice of the mysterious Gaeltacht expressing itself at last and just in time. Appearing at a sensitive time in Irish history, the reading of these texts as relics of an heroic Irish past nourished hopes of a brave Irish future. Their English translations, though received no less enthusiastically, have often been dismissed as imperfect and undesirable conduits to the author. Informed by the basic theme of dialogue, this thesis examines the politics of culture that brought the Islandman, man and book, into being, and that have surrounded the texts since they first appeared. It considers both the autobiography itself and the translation in terms of cultural process as well as product. It identifies the desire to control the reading of the texts as a legacy of the Gaelic League desire to wall the Irish culture in and examines it from several points of view – most notably from the points of view of translation theory, autobiography theory and, to a lesser extent, post-colonial theory. These modes of enquiry show that the sites of constraint imposed upon the texts reflect a cultural anxiety about what is revealed about this community that was made to represent Ireland. They demonstrate that the conventional reading of the texts, which privileges Tomas’ fisherman identity, has veiled the writer protagonist inscribed in the texts, subordinating his identity as a writer to his identity as a peasant. The thesis contests the reading of Tomas’ work as “representative” and “authentic” with a recognition of the personal aspects of the individual self that Tomas inscribed in his work.
Irish Identity and the Literary Revival: Synge, Yeats, Joyce and O'Casey.
This work illuminates the art of four of Ireland's greatest writers through a detailed examination of their works in the context of a single main theme: each writer's attempt to grapple with, or define, the nature or meaning of Irish cultural and political identity. This vexed quetion of identity is an obsessive concern for each of the four, permeating the content, form and style of their major works. Rather than use the literature reductively, G.J. Watson allows his major theme to emerge and develop from direct and close engagement with the writers' texts, which are examined in detailed, full-length essays. This book has been much used by undergraduate and postgraduate students. It should be enjoyed by all those with an interest in Irish literature and culture, and especially by those with a particular interest in Synge, Yeats, Joyce or O'Casey.
Browning's Lyric Intentions
No poet was ever more fascinated by intentions than Browning, or more willing to insist upon their significance. In Sordello (1840), in his prose essays on Chatterton (1842) and Shelley (1852),' and elsewhere, Browning asserts that what a poet writes is less than what he means; that realization betrays impulse; that form even at its best expresses purpose inadequately.2 Criticism written in recent decades, in its just recoil from superficial assessments of poetic intentionality like those issued by the Browning Societies, has been ill at ease with those who would champion intentions. Criticism has not been slow to draw from Browning's assertions the conclusion that he so prized the poem-as-intention that he disdained the poem-as-artifact; nor has it been slow to disdain him in