Chapter 1 establishes the contours of the Irish Revival and revivalism as we have come to understand both today. Understood as a constellation of movements, discourses, and practices, the Revival was a modernizing force in a media environment that encouraged multiple visions of Ireland’s past and its future. My discussion of the Irish Revival and revivalism situates Yeats’s literary revivalism within a broader cultural context. I argue that the Revival’s message was often constructed in a modern media environment as part of a process of remediation, whereby revivalist texts, often first published in the daily newspapers, were republished and recontextualized so that they might be recognized anew and with greater understanding. These texts also served a remedial function – that is, they were part of revivalist emphasis on self-improvement. Yeats, in concert with revivalists across a wide political spectrum, helped forge the idea of a national consciousness and a modern national literature in which the legends of ancient Ireland would find a place.