The strong connections between nationalism and religion are examined. Finally, the supposed difference between political nationalism and 'cultural nationalism' is interrogated.

First published in 1979, Irish Identity and the Literary Revival, through the works of W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, J. M. Synge, and Sean O’Casey, documents the complex spectrum of political, social and other pressures that helped fashion modern Ireland. At least three sets of cultural assumptions coexisted in Ireland during the years between 1890 and 1930, -- English, Irish and Anglo-Irish, each united by a common language but divided by considerable tensions and strain. The question of Irish identity forms the central theme of the study, and illustrates how it was a major, even obsessive concern for these writers. Subsidiary and interwoven themes constantly recur. Themes such as the concepts of the peasant and the hero, political nationalism, the meaning of Ireland’s history and the validity of her cultural traditions. Rather than use the literature concerned as merely endorsing evidence for a sociological or political thesis, this study allows its major themes and issues to emerge and develop from direct and close study of the work of the writers. This book will be of interest to students of literature and history.

Essay from the year 2013 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: sans note, University of Rennes 2, language: English, abstract: James Joyce and William Butler Yeats are two major figures in modern Irish literature. Both are modernist writers who have experienced the transition through revolutions from Ireland as a colony to Ireland as a Free State and finally as a Republic. Their attitude to narrating the nation and the evolution of their style go hand in hand with the societal and political changes. At that time, there was an intense debate on Ireland's subordination, its relationship with England and its mythologies. This study explores the sort of link which exists between the authors' writings, Irish nationality, and nationalism. To what extent can Joyce and Yeats be said to write about the same Ireland while proceeding in a different way? How do they situate themselves in the process of nation-building? Irish nationalism was much debated during the literary revival up until the Post-Free State period. If it is true that it triggered tensions between those who supported it and those who did not, in the case of Joyce who excluded himself from the native tradition by exiling and Yeats who was static in the invention of a tradition, it is more complex. Both share a cultural memory but also possess their own individual memory in which modernism does not mean the same thing. It will be seen that they participate in the culture they criticize while remaining aloof from it and that the material they use to mount this critique is a form of refuge which at the same time is not directed towards the same goal.

Hailed by critics as ""indispensable"" and ""splendidly readable,"" Irish Identity and the Literary Revival 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 question 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, yet with its jargon- free style it also appeals to the general, educated reader. It will 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. G. J. Watson is a senior lecturer in the department of English at the University of Aberdeen. He is the author of Drama: An Introduction (Macmillan, 1984) and the editor of W. B. Yeats: The Fiction, forthcoming from Penguin Books. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ""G. J. Watson has written a book which is at once a work of consummate scholarship and an act of personal testimony. . . . [It] is an exciting and deeply moving book, which will be studied with profit not only by literary critics, historians, and sociologists, but also, one hopes, by many ordinary readers. . . . As a work of criticism, this study is outstanding in its sensitivity to the nuances of a text, in its breadth of learning, and in its lucidity of style. . . . Irish Identity and the Literary Revival takes its place on the shelf as an indispensable study of the literature of the Irish crisis.""--Declan Kiberd, Review of English Studies ""Every chapter is illuminating. . . . A splendidly readable book, widely informed, alert, even witty, in the midst of its scrupulous marshalling of evidence.""--Brian Cosgrove, Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review of Letters, Philosophy and Science/I>

"James Joyce: Developing Irish Identity" follows the increasing focus on Irish identity in Joyce's major works of prose. This book traces the development of the idea of Ireland, the concept of Irishness, the formation of a national identity and the need to deconstruct a nationalistic self-conception of nation in Joyce's work. Through close reading of "Dubliners", "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man", "Stephen Hero" and "Ulysses", Joyce articulates the problems that colonialism poses to a nation-state that cannot create its identity autonomously. Furthermore, this reading uncovers Joyce's conception of national identity as increasingly sophisticated and complicated after Irish independence was won. From here, Halloran argues that Joyce presents his readers with ideas and suggestions for the future of Ireland. As Irish studies become increasingly imbricated with postcolonial discourse, the need for re-examination of classic texts becomes necessary."James Joyce: Developing Irish Identity" provides a new approach for understanding the dramatic development of Joyce's oeuvre by providing a textual analysis guided by postcolonial theory.

How can we use art to reconstruct ourselves and the material world? Is every individual an art object? Is the material world an art text? This book answers these questions by examining modernist literature, especially James Joyce and W.B. Yeats, in the context of anarchist intellectual thought and Georges Sorel's theory of social myth.