Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Contents
- Introduction
- Chapter One “Iran” in Irish Nationalist Antiquarian Imaginations: The Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century
- Chapter Two Thomas Moore's Poetic and Historical Irans: Intercepted Letters (1813), Lalla Rookh (1817), and The History of Ireland (1835)
- Chapter Three Irans of Young Ireland Imaginations, 1842–48: From Thomas Osborne Davis’ “Thermopylae” to James Clarence Mangan's “Aye-Travailing Gnomes”
- Chapter Four Contemporary Affinities: The Nation and the Anglo-Iranian War of 1856–57
- Chapter Five An Gorta Mór of Others and Nationalist Neglect: The Nation and the Iranian Famine of 1870–72
- Chapter Six The Ghosts of Iran's Past in Irish Nationalist Imaginations in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century
- Chapter Seven Irish Nationalists and the Iranian Question, 1906–21
- Chapter Eight Perspectival Detour: Iranian Familiarity with Ireland and the Irish Question Prior to the Easter Rising
- Chapter Nine Nation, History, and Memory: The Irish Free State, Europe-Centered Worlding of Ireland, and James Joyce's Finnegans Wake (1939)
- Conclusion: Historical Apophenia, Affinities, Departures, and Nescience
- Bibliography of Works Cited
- Index
Chapter Three - Irans of Young Ireland Imaginations, 1842–48: From Thomas Osborne Davis’ “Thermopylae” to James Clarence Mangan's “Aye-Travailing Gnomes”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 February 2024
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Contents
- Introduction
- Chapter One “Iran” in Irish Nationalist Antiquarian Imaginations: The Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century
- Chapter Two Thomas Moore's Poetic and Historical Irans: Intercepted Letters (1813), Lalla Rookh (1817), and The History of Ireland (1835)
- Chapter Three Irans of Young Ireland Imaginations, 1842–48: From Thomas Osborne Davis’ “Thermopylae” to James Clarence Mangan's “Aye-Travailing Gnomes”
- Chapter Four Contemporary Affinities: The Nation and the Anglo-Iranian War of 1856–57
- Chapter Five An Gorta Mór of Others and Nationalist Neglect: The Nation and the Iranian Famine of 1870–72
- Chapter Six The Ghosts of Iran's Past in Irish Nationalist Imaginations in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century
- Chapter Seven Irish Nationalists and the Iranian Question, 1906–21
- Chapter Eight Perspectival Detour: Iranian Familiarity with Ireland and the Irish Question Prior to the Easter Rising
- Chapter Nine Nation, History, and Memory: The Irish Free State, Europe-Centered Worlding of Ireland, and James Joyce's Finnegans Wake (1939)
- Conclusion: Historical Apophenia, Affinities, Departures, and Nescience
- Bibliography of Works Cited
- Index
Summary
Commenting on the early phase of the Royal Irish Academy, the prominent twentieth-century Irish nationalist author and playwright William Butler Yeats wrote in 1937:
A generation before The Nation newspaper was founded [in 1842,] the Royal Irish Academy had begun the study of ancient Irish literature. […] The Academy persuaded the English Government to finance an ordnance survey on a large scale; scholars, including the great scholar [John] O’Donovan, were sent from village to village recording names and their legends. […] the Royal Irish Academy and its public with equal enthusiasm welcomed Pagan and Christian; thought the Round Towers a commemoration of Persian fire-worship. […]
Yeats did not mention that by 1842 Petrie's position on the Round Towers (first articulated in 1833) was steadily gaining ground in the Royal Irish Academy, even if Petrie's most comprehensive study on the topic The Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland did not appear in print until 1845. From 1833 to 1846, Petrie was in charge of the Ordnance Survey, mentioned by Yeats, with which O’Donovan and Eugene O’Curry too were affiliated. Nor did Yeats elaborate that many scholars and other commentators continued to latch on to varying oriental theories of ancient Ireland, regardless of their perspectives on the origin of the Round Towers. As already noted, in some circles the former competing oriental theories of the likes of Vallancey, Sylvester O’Halloran, Louisa Catherine Beaufort, Betham, Lanigan, D’Alton (Dalton), Henry O’Brien, Windele, Thomas Moore, and others continued to hold sway, even if often in revised forms. These views were frequently echoed in the “national” and provincial press in Ireland. Examples of the latter include the Cork Examiner, founded in 1841 as an O’Connellite pro-Catholic rights and pro-Repeal movement newspaper. Certainly outside the Academy, no abrupt para-digm shift was detectable regarding the old antiquarian views of the Round Towers. Nor did the appearance of the Young Ireland nationalist movement and its newspaper The Nation in 1842, which was committed to cross-ethnic and cross-confessional Irish nationalism, mark any seismic departure from older oriental theories of Irish origins in general. The Young Ireland coterie, with their own dynamic brand of romantic nationalism, remained divided on the supposed oriental heritage of ancient Ireland, as well as on the subject of the Round Towers.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Éirinn and Iran Go BráchIran in Irish-Nationalist Historical, Literary, Cultural, and Political Imaginations from the Late-18th Century to 1921, pp. 211 - 302Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2023