Read Ireland Book Reviews
Issue 373 - 14 April 2007
Irish Bardic Poetry and Rhetorical Reality by Michelle O Riordan
Hardback; 50 Euro / 65 USD / 35 UK; 456 pages
Irish bardic poetry is an expression of mediaeval European high literary cultures. Its themes, tropes, and treatments are, along with being an expression of indigenous Irish literary culture, reflexes of the shared classical culture of the Europe of the High Middle Ages. This work explores the rhetorical reality in the works of poets from the thirteenth (Adamh O Fialan) to the seventeenth centuries (Eochaidh O hEoghusa). Emphasis is placed on the literary world of the poetry, building on the metrical, linguistic, textual studies and editions published by scholars over the last century. The readings presented here reveal the world of Irish bardic poetry as a fully chromatic, vibrant, humorous, scholarly and literary enterprise. Poets participated creatively and consciously in contemporary literary movements, filtering and selecting to suit the sensibilities of the vital indigenous literary culture. The readings offered in this study re-establish the international flavour of Irish bardic profane poetry and, in doing so, return the poet and the poetry to a world in which the literary works have merit in their own right. In this study, bardic poetry is not explored for its immediate historical references to events or to people. The result of this is to cast a bright light both on the literary nature of the poetry and on the vigorous and engaged literary culture in Ireland, abandoning, for once, the necessity to refer everything to the duality of conquered and conqueror.
Exploring Newgrange by Liam Mac Uistin
Trade Paperback; 10 Euro / 13 USD / 7 UK; 120 pages [Add To Basket]
Older that the Egyptian pyramids, older than Stonehenge, the tomb at Newgrange in County Meath, Ireland, is one of the oldest structures in the world. For 5,000 years it has housed the remains of a formidable Stone Age people, sheltering the spirits of the long dead from the outside world. Modern archaeological techniques have revealed much about the lives of our Stone Age ancestors, but questions about the tomb at Newgrange remain. Why did a group of Megalithic settlers spend years building a massive tomb? How did they move the huge boulders? What do the symbols inscribed on the stones mean? The author attempts to piece together the clues left behind by this extraordinary Stone Age civilization.
Gerry Fitt: A Political Chameleon by Michael A. Murphy
Trade Paperback; 20 Euro / 26 USD / 14 UK; 410 pages
Fitt was a member of the minority nationalist community in Northern Ireland, which was governed by the Unionist majority, and his early years are by no means untypical of his class, generation and community. However, an interest in politics ensured that Fitt's life would be somewhat more distinctive. This first account of Gerry Fitt's life also investigates the formation of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) of which Fitt was a founder member and first leader. It analyses the role played by Fitt and the SDLP in the attempts to find a solution to the political breakdown that took place in the mid-1970s; Fitt's increasing isolation within the SDLP and his subsequent disenchantment in the late 1970s; traces the events which led to the loss of Fitt's Westminster seat (after seventeen years) to Gerry Adams, head of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) and Fitt's subsequent appointment to the House of Lords. Fitt seemed to enjoy being a maverick and was not predisposed to party discipline. He needed to be leader or to be able to do his own thing and to further his ambitions free from constraint.
A Guide to the Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland and Brittany revised edition by Aubrey Burl
Flexicover; 20 Euro / 27 USD / 14 UK; 300 pages, with black-and-white photos and maps throughout [Add To Basket]
From Stonehenge to Callanish, from Newgrange to Er-Lannic, great prehistoric stone circles have drawn thousands of admiring visitors to their sites every year. This practical guidebook deals comprehensively with the stone circles of Britain and Ireland and with the cromlechs and megalithic 'horseshoes' of Brittany. Featuring information, useful maps and more than 70 photographs, this is a resource for those interested in the mysteries of the ancient sanctuaries known as stone circles. This new edition will include a section on 'Druidical' circles, romantic creations of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
A Bloody Canvas: The Mike McTigue Story by Andrew Gallimore
Trade Paperback; 17 Euro / 22 USD / 12 UK; 352 pages
A Bloody Canvas: The Mike McTigue Story" tells the story of how Michael Francis McTigue left Kilnamona, Co. Clare, to seek fame and fortune in the United States, only for circumstances to bring him back to Dublin where he would win one of the strangest world title fights in boxing history. Set partly against the background of the Irish Civil War, it also tells of a bitterly divided people who managed to set aside their differences for twenty rounds of boxing before the guns started firing and the mines started exploding once more. But primarily, "A Bloody Canvas" is a biography. It tells how an ageing journeyman fighter found himself to be the right Irishman, in the right place at the right time. This is the saga of an underdog boxer laced with wrenching danger and a panoramic sense of life from late eighteenth-century rural Ireland to the Civil War, to the heady days of the Jazz Age in New York and the desperation of the Great Depression.
Jude / Gaeilgeoir Deareanach Charna / Incubus by Micheal O Conghaile, Breandan O hEaghra and Caitriona Ni Chonaola
Paperback; 12 Euro / 16 USD / 9 UK; 196 pages
Jude, Gaeilgeoir Deireanach Charna agus Incubus is teideal do thrí dhráma nua atá foilsithe ag Cló Iar-Chonnachta. Mar chuid den cheiliúradh 75 bliain ó bunaíodh Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe fógraíodh Gradam Cuimhneacháin Bháitéir Uí Mhaicín, comórtas scripteanna do dhráma fada in ómós don scríbhneoir, aisteoir agus drámadóir cáiliúil. Foilsítear anseo trí dhráma ar bronnadh gradam orthu sa chomórtas sin.
Tá Jude á léiriú ag Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe ó 9-16 Márta faoi stiúir Sheáin Uí Thárpaigh. Páirteach sa léiriú seo tá Áine Máire Ní Óráin (Fair City), Peadar Cox (Ros na Rún), Mairéad Ní Ógáin (Bed Among the Lentils), Tara Bhreathnach (Rough Diamond), Dónall Ó Héalaí (Aifric) agus Tomás Mac Con Iomaire (iar-Cheannaire RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta).
Jude, Gaeilgeoir Deireanach Charna and Incubus are three new plays in Irish which have been published by Cló Iar-Chonnachta. In celebration of 75 years in business, An Taibhdhearc theatre in Galway, the national Irish-language theatre, announced a competition for new writing named after the writer, actor and playwright Walter Macken. Three of the prize-winning plays are published in this book.
Jude was staged in An Taibhdhearc, Galway, from 9-16 March under the direction of Seán Ó Tarpaigh. The cast features Áine Máire Ní Óráin (Fair City), Peadar Cox (Ros na Rún), Mairéad Ní Ógáin (Bed Among the Lentils), Tara Bhreathnach (Rough Diamond), Dónall Ó Héalaí (Aifric) and Tomás Mac Con Iomaire (Former Head of RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta).
New in Paperback:
The Tragedy of Erskine Childers: Dangerous Waters by Leonard Piper
Trade Paperback; 23 Euro / 30 USD / 16 UK; 260 pages [Add To Basket]
In "The Riddle of the Sands", a gripping spy story set amongst the shoals and mists of the North Sea coast in the years before the First World War, Erskine Childers fathered the modern genre of spy adventures, as well as writing a great yachting classic. Unlike John Buchan or John le Carre, however, Childers himself led a life involving spying, gun-running and conspiracy, and a constant search for adventure and danger, which led in the end to his execution by firing squad in Ireland in 1923. "The Tragedy of Erskine Childers" tells the extraordinary story of a brilliant and highly talented eccentric. A pioneering yachtsman in the early days of small yacht sailing, Childers became such a fervent supporter of Irish nationalism that he ran guns to Ireland on his boat. In the Irish Civil War, his extremism and wish to take part in active service rather than write propaganda, led to his betrayal, trial and execution.
Available Again:
Compulsory Irish: Language and Education in Ireland, 1870s – 1970s by Adrian Kelly
Hardback; 50 Euro / 65 USD / 40 UK; 180 pages [Add To Basket]
Compulsory Irish was the major factor in moulding the education system of independent Ireland and this work, which draws on previously unused files from Government departments, is the first detailed account of the effects the compulsory Irish policy had on the education system and the status of the language. Adrian Kelly examines the rationale behind the introduction of compulsory Irish and the ever increasing emphasis on it in the curriculum of the primary (national) schools and at second and third levels. The volume examines the extent to which the policy, which had its genesis in the pre-independence cultural nationalist movements, was not based on the needs of the education system but rather on the demands of nationalism. During the period it was acknowledged that the revival policy was detrimental to the achievement of pupils, but this was seen as an acceptable price to pay for the revival of Irish. The volume also argues that the ill-founded policy damaged the "dignity" of the language and, while achieving little or nothing in practical linguistic terms, resulted in apathy and at times hostility towards Irish among the general public. Apart from highlighting the clash between the demands of nationalism and the role of the education system, the volume examines the extent to which criticism of the compulsory Irish policy was stifled. This in turn ensured that the effect of compulsion on the education system and the levels of attainment of pupils was never scientifically examined - to carry out such an examination would have been seen as an admission of failure. It was only in the 1960s that there was an official acceptance that Irish would not be revived as the national language in practice, the policy of "revival" being replaced with that of "survival", a change which began to be reflected in the schools from the 1970s.
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