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Controversies are high drama: in them people speak lines as colorful and passionate as any recited on stage. In the years before the 1916 Rising, public battles were fought in Ireland over French paintings, a maverick priest, Dublin slum children, and theatrical censorship. Controversy was "popular," wrote George Moore, especially "when accompanied with the breaking of chairs."In her new book, Lucy McDiarmid offers a witty and illuminating account of these and other controversies, antagonistic exchanges with no single or no obvious high ground. They merit attention, in her view, not because the Irish are more combative than other peoples, but because controversies functioned centrally in the...
In prose that is darkly humorous and alive with detail, Valiant Gentlemen reimagines the lives and intimate friendships of humanitarian and Irish patriot Roger Casement; his closest friend, Herbert Ward; and Ward's extraordinary wife, the Argentinian-American heiress Sarita Sanford. Valiant Gentlemen takes the reader on an intimate journey, from Ward and Casement's misadventurous youth in the Congo - where, among other things, they bore witness to an Irish whiskey heir's taste for cannibalism - to Ward's marriage to Sarita and their flourishing family life in France, to Casement's covert homosexuality and enduring nomadic lifestyle floating between his work across the African continent and involvement in Irish politics. When World War I breaks out, Casement and Ward's longstanding political differences finally come to a head and when Ward and his teenage sons leave to fight on the frontlines for England, Casement begins to work alongside the Germans to help free Ireland from British rule. What results is tragic and riveting, as both men are forced to confront notions of love and betrayal in the face of the vastly different tracks their lives have taken.
This is the most wide-ranging study ever published of political violence and the punishment of Irish political offenders from 1848 to the founding of the Irish Free State in 1922. Those who chose violence to advance their Irish nationalist beliefs ranged from gentlemen revolutionaries to those who openly embraced terrorism or even full-scale guerilla war. Seán McConville provides a comprehensive survey of Irish revolutionary struggle, matching chapters on punishment of offenders with descriptions and analysis of their campaigns. Government's response to political violence was determined by a number of factors, including not only the nature of the offences but also interest and support from the United States and Australia, as well as current objectives of Irish policy.
This collection of essays focuses on issues of gender and sexuality in Irish history, biography, language, literature and drama. While the contributors employ a variety of methodological and critical perspectives, they share the conviction that the gendering of Ireland - not only of the nation, but of actual Irish men and women - is a construction of culture and ideology and not simply one of nature.
This book examines how the cultural and ethical power of literature allowed writers and readers to reflect on the practice of capital punishment in the UK, Ireland and the US between 1890 and 1950. It explores how connections between ‘high’ and ‘popular’ culture seem particularly inextricable where the death penalty is at stake, analysing a range of forms including major works of canonical literature, detective fiction, plays, polemics, criminological and psychoanalytic tracts and letters and memoirs. The book addresses conceptual understandings of the modern death penalty, including themes such as confession, the gothic, life-writing and the human-animal binary. It also discusses the role of conflict in shaping the representation of capital punishment, including chapters on the Easter Rising, on World War I, on colonial and quasi-colonial conflict and on World War II. Ebury’s overall approach aims to improve our understanding of the centrality of the death penalty and the role it played in major twentieth century literary movements and historical events.
This book explores the efforts made by British governments, Irish politicians, and Irish cultural organisations to master and shape Ireland in an age of increasingly rapid change, and explain the process and outcome of these endeavours.