Topic 56: Historical Relations Between Ireland and Great Britain. Irish Authors: Sean O’Casey and James Joyce

Historical background: Main points

• Henry VIII

• Elizabeth I

• James II of England and William of Orange (17th c.)

• 19th c.

• 1900s

• Nowadays

Historical background: Henry VIII and Ireland

• Wanted to bring Ireland under British control

• Tries to consolidate power by setting the English Anglican Church + Reformation

• The Irish clearly refuse and rebel

Historical background: Elizabeth I and Ireland

• Also tries to oppress the Irish, causing a second rebellion against the British

• Introduces a policy of colonisation by Scottish and English Protestants, who are given the best lands

• The county of Derry is taken over by London merchants, who rename it Londonderry (the name was officially changed back to Derry in recent years)

Historical background: James II and William of Orange

• Unpopular ruler because he was Catholic and tried to remove anti-Catholic rules

• Tolerated because he had a protestant daughter, Mary, next in throne

• However, he produced a male heir, who became the next person in line

• The English revolted and instigated William of Orange, Mary’s husband, to invade the island and put Mary on the throne

• James fled to Ireland. William stayed in England and shared the throne with Mary

• In Ireland, James managed to drive out the Protestant community from Ireland, a period known as the anti-Protestant Killing Years in Scotland

• After some years, William of Orange went back to England to defeat James, which he did in the Battle of Boyne. This caused Parliament to bring anti-Catholic legislation, which lasted until the 1770s

Historical context: Ireland in the 17th century

• Ireland was added to the UK in the Act of Union (1801).

• Social reforms are carried out

Historical context: Ireland and the 1900s

• 1912

  • British Liberal Party needed Irish politicians in order to achieve majority in the Parliament. To win their support, they offered Ireland home rule.

  • After winning the elections, things did not go as planned for the Irish, which caused some protests that ended with the execution of Irish leaders

• 1921

  • British pact with Ireland which resulted in the partition of the country

  • The northern countries remained British and the rest of the country gained independence (because the northern part was predominantly Protestant and wanted to remain under British control)

Historical context: Ireland nowadays

• Ceasefire in Northern Ireland

  • In 1998 the Real I.R.A, a terrorist group, emerged. They were opposed to the peace process and started a terror campaign.

• Other problems

  • Suspension of the Irish parliament because of Sinn Fein’s spying at Stormont, which caused extreme nationalist parties to gain support in the elections, making the peace process more difficult

Literary background

• Until the 19th c. there are no clear references to Irish culture in Irish writing, but throughout this century writing became distinctly more patriotic, leading to an Irish Renaissance that culminated in the Irish Movement

• Irish Movement

  • Strong political nationalism

  • Centred around characters such as Yeats (founded the first Irish National Theatre, The Abbey)

    • Kept in business by trips to England

    • Plays were almost invariably by Irish authors writing about Irish themes

    • The style enticed the audiences

      • Realism in scenery, dress and language

      • Refusal to allow any star to dominate the group

      • Absence of unnecessary gesture

  • The main aim of the movement was Ireland as an independent nation (distinctive features such as religion, sense of community and nature of the people)

  • Some writers did not want to be part of the movement

    • Joyce turned his back on it, though he continued to write about Ireland all of his life

    • O’Casey associated later with the theatre, focusing more on Irish themes

James Joyce (life)

• One of the most significant writers of the Anglo-Irish literary history

• Born to a Catholic family in Dublin, educated in the best schools and a brilliant student obsessed with writing

• Use of stream of consciousness and the interior monologue

  • Concerned with psychology and the analysis of man’s inner consciousness

  • Experimental linguistics in his works

  • The mind of the individual becomes the writer’s focus of interest: interior monologue reflects the characters’ inner mental perspective

  • Stream of consciousness describes the free association of ideas in the human mind

James Joyce (works)

• Joyce’s most relevant short stories, Dubliners, were published in 1915

  • Influenced by Ibsen’s Naturalism

  • Episodes about childhood, adulthood and youth

• The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

  • Autobiographical novel that traces the infancy, childhood, adolescence and early manhood of Stephen Dedalus, Joyce’s alter ego

  • Bildungsroman: formative process of the character is made explicit

    • Language and reality become more complex

    • Description filtered through Stephen’s mind (subjective, symbolism)

• Ulysses

  • Modern epic of the 20th c.

  • Modelled on Homer’s Odyssey, set in Dublin’s slums

  • Life and mind of Leopold and Mrs Bloom during a single day

  • Inner thoughts and emotional reactions of the characters are recorded through their wanderings about the city of Dublin

  • Objectivity is taken to the fullest extent, which caused the book to be banned as obscene

  • Notable influence on the 20th c novel

• Finnegan’s Wake

  • Last novel

  • Intertextuality and experimentation

  • Cyclic theory of history through a series of uninterrupted dreams of his main character

  • Characters come and go in the same way as occurrences and thoughts

Sean O’Cassey (life)

• In spite of the fact that Roman Catholicism has always been the religion of the Irish population, only one of the most relevant Irish writers (James Joyce) was born a Roman Catholic. In Ireland the majority of Protestants are part of the Anglican, and O’Casey was born into this group

• Since he was born, he was part of a minority group, but not an oppressed minority; on the contrary.

• O’Casey is a sort of outsider, he rejected through his literary career his social and religious background

• Plays centred around working-class people, critical of the contemporary Irish society and offering a dark and pessimistic perspective of life in general

Sean O’Casey (works)

• The Shadow of a Gunman

  • Tragedy, a man is mistaken for an IRA member

  • Captures the violence of the War of Independence between the British forces and the IRA

• The Plough and the Stars

  • Four-act tragedy about the events preceding and taking place in the Easter Rising

  • The play reflects the price paid by suffering women due to a fanatical revolution

• Juno and the Paycock

  • Closes O’Casey’s Dublin’s trilogy on major events of the 1916-22 period

  • Tragedy of a family, taking as central character Juno, the long-suffering wife and mother who has to endure a series of disgraces falling upon her family

• The Silver Tassie

  • Anti-war play dealing with WWI

  • Impassioned picture of the footballer hero returning home paralysed from trenches