Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T08:29:34.368Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 1 - Beginnings and endings

Writing from the margins, 1665–1800

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Derek Hand
Affiliation:
St Patrick's College, Dublin
Get access

Summary

There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.

(Walter Benjamin)

Dean Rowland Davies, the chaplain with the Williamite forces who was last seen having his boots stolen in Clonmel, writes in his last journal entry for 30 September 1690: ‘This day the residue of our army began their march towards Kinsale; and the magistrates of Cork, resuming their places, proclaimed the King and Queen, and put the city into some order.’ After the chaos and the upheaval of war comes the hard task of securing and winning the peace, and of bringing stability back into public and private life. One view of the subsequent eighteenth century is that it is a period of relative calm and certainty, in comparison to the centuries preceding and succeeding it. For W. B. Yeats the eighteenth century was the ‘one Irish century that escaped from darkness and confusion’. It is a curious remark and, of course, it is a poet's estimation rather than a historian's. What Yeats, the artist, is attracted to in this century is the ‘image of the modern mind's discovery of itself, of its own permanent form’. His assessment suggests that the eighteenth century marks a break with the old in its embrace of the new. Yet, this does not imply that it was an easy, unproblematic transition, the headlong rush into modernity does not necessarily suggest that all of the past, all of history, is left behind and forgotten: trace elements remain to disturb and disrupt the modernisation project.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Beginnings and endings
  • Derek Hand, St Patrick's College, Dublin
  • Book: A History of the Irish Novel
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511975615.003
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Beginnings and endings
  • Derek Hand, St Patrick's College, Dublin
  • Book: A History of the Irish Novel
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511975615.003
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Beginnings and endings
  • Derek Hand, St Patrick's College, Dublin
  • Book: A History of the Irish Novel
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511975615.003
Available formats
×