The Comic Irishman makes heretofore unacknowledged distinctions among different types of comic Irishmen and convincingly casts away the stereotyped version of the stage Irishman. It shows how the Irish comic character--whether a blundering fool or a lazy, fun-loving fellow--evolved into a glib and witty rogue. The book is a critical study of modern Irish fiction and drama. The first part provides an analysis of the various Irish comic figures which were popular in the nineteenth century. These are discussed within a social and historic framework because they were to a large extent shaped by the erosion of Gaelic culture under the impact of English government. In the process of shifting from one cultural nexus to another, the Irishman came to be regarded as highly inferior to his English counterpart, yet amusing because of his difficulty with the English language and his rebellious, unpredictable behavior. The second part of the book discusses the writings of such twentieth-century authors as James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Sean O'Casey, and Flann O'Brien, who concentrated on the analysis of the stage Irishman. Some brilliantly exploited the comic tradition, while other used satire to explode what they perceived as a debasing myth.

The image of the Irish in the United States changed drastically over time, from that of hard-drinking, rioting Paddies to genial, patriotic working-class citizens. In 'Twas Only an Irishman's Dream, William H. A. Williams traces the change in this image through more than 700 pieces of sheet music--popular songs from the stage and for the parlor--to show how Americans' opinions of Ireland and the Irish went practically from one extreme to the other. Because sheet music was a commercial item it had to be acceptable to the broadest possible song-buying public. "Negotiations" about their image involved Irish songwriters, performers, and pressured groups, on the one hand, and non-Irish writers, publishers, and audiences on the other. Williams ties the contents of song lyrics to the history of the Irish diaspora, suggesting how ethnic stereotypes are created and how they evolve within commercial popular culture.

This study examines the early dramatic works of Yeats, Synge, and Gregory in the context of late colonial Ireland’s unique socio-political landscape. Cusack demonstrates the complex negotiation of nationalism, class, and gender identities undertaken by these authors in the years leading up to Ireland’s revolution.

This book examines the development of literary constructions of Irish-American identity from the mid-nineteenth century arrival of the Famine generation through the Great Depression. It goes beyond an analysis of negative Irish stereotypes and shows how Irish characters became the site of intense cultural debate regarding American identity, with some writers imagining Irishness to be the antithesis of Americanness, but others suggesting Irishness to be a path to Americanization. This study emphasizes the importance of considering how a sense of Irishness was imagined by both Irish-American writers conscious of the process of self-definition as well as non-Irish writers responsive to shifting cultural concerns regarding ethnic others. It analyzes specific iconic Irish-American characters including Mark Twain’s Huck Finn and Margaret Mitchell’s Scarlet O’Hara, as well as lesser-known Irish monsters who lurked in the American imagination such as T.S. Eliot’s Sweeney and Frank Norris’ McTeague. As Dowd argues, in contemporary American society, Irishness has been largely absorbed into a homogenous white culture, and as a result, it has become a largely invisible ethnicity to many modern literary critics. Too often, they simply do not see Irishness or do not think it relevant, and as a result, many Irish-American characters have been de-ethnicized in the critical literature of the past century. This volume reestablishes the importance of Irish ethnicity to many characters that have come to be misread as generically white and shows how Irishness is integral to their stories.