Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • Chapter 3 - Irish Writers and Europe

  • from Part I - After the War: Ideologies in Transition
  • Edited by Eve Patten, Trinity College Dublin
  • Book:
    Irish Literature in Transition, 1940–1980
    Published online:
    28 February 2020
    Print publication:
    12 March 2020, pp 66-82

  • Summary

    This chapter examines the way in which Irish writing throughout the middle decades of the century negotiated a national identity in tension with a European sensibility. The Continental dimensions of many key Irish texts, such as Kate O’Brien’s The Land of Spices (1941), or the European locations of Irish émigré writers such as Samuel Beckett and Thomas McGreevy, need to be expanded into a full account of the country’s brokerage of European ideas, philosophies and intellectual stimuli. The Ireland that ‘froze for want of Europe’, in Patrick Kavanagh’s 1942 ‘Lough Derg’, emerged over these decades towards integration of various kinds, as reflected consistently in the work of writers such as Hubert Butler. In 1973, Ireland’s accession to membership of the European Economic Community marked a stepping stone in diplomatic and trade relations; how, in turn, does the writing examined in this chapter support the concept of the ‘Irish European’, and what implications does this have for outlines of a ‘national’ literary tradition?