Irish literature

The Irish literature includes literary production in Ireland in a broader sense, the literature of the Irish diaspora . Sometimes the term only refers to literature in Irish (Gaelic) . Irish literature in the English language is known as Anglo-Irish literature .

Irish-language literature (especially that of the Middle Ages) is the subject of research in Celtology , while Anglo-Irish is generally dealt with in the context of English literature by English studies , although there are often overlaps, especially since many Irish authors wrote and write in both languages. Irish Studies has recently established itself as an overarching cultural discipline at some universities .

Languages ​​and traditions

In Ireland, literature has been passed down in various languages since the early Middle Ages . The majority is available in Irish and English, while smaller corpora are in Latin and French . There is a clear temporal separation with regard to the importance of the individual literary traditions . While in the Middle Ages the literature in Old , Middle and Early Neo- Irish made up the majority of the corpus , which was supplemented by Latin texts, from the time of the English conquest an English, but also a small Anglo-Norman corpus developed.

The dominant literary language of modern Irish literature was and is English. Irish, on the other hand, has been pushed back over the centuries and is now spoken as the mother tongue of only a few tens of thousands of people, mostly in remote rural areas. As a literary language, however, it has been revived as part of Irish nationalism ( Irish Renaissance ) since the 19th century and is understandable as a second language to over 1.8 million Irish people. Literature came and plays a special role in this; many of the greatest Irish writers of the 20th and 21st centuries published in both languages, such as Flann O'Brien and Brendan Behan .

Through a centuries-old cultural connection with Catholic France, French is also very present in Irish literature; Writers such as Oscar Wilde ( Salomé , 1891) and Samuel Beckett ( En attendant Godot , 1953) initially wrote some of their works in French.

Millions of Irish emigrated during the 19th and 20th centuries, mostly to Great Britain, Canada and the United States. Their experiences are reflected in a rich diaspora literature. Irish-American authors who put their origins at the center of their work include James T. Farrell ( Studs Lonigan , 1932–1935), Betty Smith ( A Tree Grows in Brooklyn , 1943), JP Donleavy ( The Ginger Man , 1955) ), Edwin O'Connor ( The Edge of Sadness , 1962), William Kennedy ( Ironweed , 1983) and Frank McCourt ( Angela's Ashes , 1996).

Early Irish Literature and its Fall

No literature has survived in written form from the time before Ireland was Christianized . As in the case of many early cultures, however, an extremely rich oral literary tradition is assumed which, however, more or less clearly left its mark on the literary monuments of later times. With the advent of Christianity and, above all, the founding of monasteries, this literature was gradually recorded in parts and - according to today's widely recognized doctrine - strongly Christianized.

The oldest datable work in Irish literature is a poem in praise of Columban of Iona , which Dallán Forgaill wrote in the year of Columban's death in 597, although it has only survived in more recent manuscripts. The great story of the cattle robbery of Cú Chulainn dates from the period between the 7th and 9th centuries . Irish literature shares with Celtic handicrafts a preference for the ornamental and avoids the overly realistic. It does not fundamentally separate the natural from the supernatural, is very imaginative and also knows considerably more terms for color gradations than other Indo-European languages.

This native literature was enriched by works from Latin and partly Greek , some of which were translated and also further developed. It can be assumed that the medieval Irish treasure trove of sagas and tales had only distant similarities with the pre-Christian corpus.

With the conquest of the island by the Normans from 1169, not only was the Irish language brought into competition with Anglo-Norman, later with English, the new residents also left written traces in their own language over time. However, centuries passed before a significant literary corpus could be spoken of, due to the political and social development of Ireland in the High and Late Middle Ages. It was not until the 18th century that what is now called Anglo-Irish literature could develop. However, this late development would lead to an unimaginable bloom in the late 19th and early 20th centuries , when Irish literature became world famous for storytelling and innovation. The 20th century saw a large number of Irish English-language writers who greatly enriched their own literary tradition, such as " world literature ".

Parallel to the rise of Anglo-Irish literature, the decline of Irish-language literature took place. After a new high point in the 13th and 14th centuries ( classical Irish ) and the gradual decline until around 1600, the political and cultural basis of this literary tradition broke with the expulsion of the Irish aristocratic class from 1607. Literature production sank to almost zero in the middle of the 19th century.

Anglo-Irish writers of the 19th century as Charles Lever and Samuel Lover often considered Ireland and its people from the condescending view of coming in to Cormwell time to the land of the English ruling class and portrayed the Irish country life at best as a picturesque backdrop, which by Sheridan Le Fanu scharfzüngig was criticized. Even William Carleton hardly got beyond stereotypical depictions of the Irish farmer. Jane Barlow (1857-1917) described the life of the impoverished population at the time of the Great Famine with great empathy .

New beginning

It was not until the late 19th and early 20th centuries that a new literary beginning took place as part of the revival of the Irish language. The founding of the Gaelic League in 1893 , an initially non-political association with the aim of keeping the Irish language alive, was important for this. In the same decade the romantic poet William Butler Yeats founded an Irish national theater in London and soon after (1904) in Dublin, the Abbey Theater , with the Zola- influenced George Moore and John Millington Synge as co-directors. Edward Plunkett ("Lord Dunsany") , a sponsor of the theater and fantasy author, took an active part in the literary revival of Anglo-Irish literature (the so-called Irish Renaissance ), which put Irish subjects in the spotlight, even if they were still English Poets regarded as role models. Daniel Corkery (1878–1964) already wrote in part in Irish. James Joyce , one of the founders of the Anglo-Irish short story ( Dubliners ), had already left his Irish environment, which he perceived as hostile and narrow-minded, at the age of twenty-two in 1904, but remained thematically linked to his homeland, where he was received only late.

The time of independence

The Irish Easter Rising of 1916 and the Civil War of 1922–23, which led to independence, marked a clear turning point . Many authors such as James Stephens (1880–1950) and Seumas O'Kelly (1881–1918) joined the nationalist movement Sinn Féin . After independence, the Irish short story in particular flourished and increasingly integrated American influences alongside English. Elizabeth Bowen in particular was still based heavily on English models such as Virginia Woolf ; she lived mostly in London.

Since the 1930s, it no longer seems sensible to distinguish between Irish-language and Anglo-Irish literature with regard to topics and forms, as a predominantly English-language national Irish literature has emerged which - quite apart from the choice of subject - is much more oral Narrative traditions were more oriented than the English literature of that time. This is what the names of the three "greats" Liam O'Flaherty , Sean O'Faolain and Frank O'Connor stand for .

The socialist playwright Seán O'Casey emigrated to England in 1927. However, he only became internationally known since 1971 through his 6-volume autobiography . Brendan Behan , who was shaped by his imprisonment as an IRA supporter and who died early, became one of the most important innovators in English-language theater with his comedies.

Among the authors, the multiple award-winning Edna O'Brien stands out, who in her novels thematized the problems of female gender roles and sexuality in the repressive Catholic Irish environment from the 1950s to 1970s (first 1960: The Country Girls ). Some of her books, e.g. Some of them have autobiographical traits were on the index in Ireland; occasionally they were also burned. (Her strictly religious mother had already burned a book by Seán O'Casey that she found with her.) She also wrote short stories, biographies and plays, among others. a. one about Virginia Woolf. John McGahern's novels were also banned several times under pressure from the Catholic Church.

today

Since about the 1970s, as a result of the partly successful revival of the Irish language, Anglo-Irish and Irish-language literature have taken positions in Irish culture that are theoretically often classified as equally important. In practice, however, Anglo-Irish literature dominates to a large extent numerically and in terms of perception - both in Ireland and especially abroad. There is a relatively high degree of mutual influence between the two traditions, for example in the work of the multi-award-winning novelist, storyteller and playwright William Trevor , who deals with marginalized people and the relationship between the English and the Irish. While many Anglo-Irish authors openly lay claim to their part of the long Irish tradition (including, for example, medieval, Irish-language literature), many modern Irish-language authors orientate themselves in an international context, also and above all on the native English language literature (so Máirtín Ó Cadhain to James Joyce ).

International role

Irish authors have received numerous international literary awards or were shortlisted for prizes. Irish winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature include William Butler Yeats (1923), George Bernard Shaw (1925), Samuel Beckett , who lived in Paris since 1937, (1969) and Seamus Heaney (1995).

Ireland has produced three Booker Prize winners since the 1990s . In 1993 Roddy Doyle was honored for his novel Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha . In 2005 won John Banville with the said intense novel The Sea ( dt. The Lake , 2006). Already in the year before the novel was The Master (dt. Portrait of the master of middle age , 2005) by Colm Tóibín in the final ( Shortlist represented), but ultimately succumbed to the work of The Line of Beauty (dt. The Line of Beauty , 2005) of the Englishman Alan Hollinghurst . As early as 1989 John Banville was with The Book of Evidence (dt. The book of evidence ) is also in the final, but lost to Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day (dt. The Remains of the Day ). In 2007 Anne Enright received the Booker Prize for the novel The Gathering .

Banville, who received the Irish Book Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013 , said: “Among many bad things, the British have brought us a wonderful language in English, and Irish society is one that is built on storytelling. In other words: we are always good for a story and we have the language to tell it. "

Secondary literature

Overview presentations and reference works

• Anne M. Brady and Brian Cleeve (Eds.): A Biographical Dictionary of Irish Writers . Lilliput, Mullingar 1985. ISBN 0946640033 and St. Martin's Press, New York 1985. ISBN 0312078714
• Seamus Deane : A Short History of Irish Literature . University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame IL 1986. Reprint 1994. ISBN 0268017514
• Robert Hogan: Dictionary of Irish Literature . 2 volumes. Second, expanded edition. Aldwych Press, London 1996. ISBN 0861721020 and Greenwood Press, Westport, Conn. 1996. ISBN 0313291721
• Margaret Kelleher and Philip O'Leary (Eds.): The Cambridge History of Irish Literature . 2 volumes. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York 2006. ISBN 0521822246
• Declan Kiberd : Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation . Jonathan Cape, London 1995. ISBN 0224041975 Reprint: Random House, New York 2009. ISBN 1409044971
• Robert Welch (Ed.): The Oxford Companion to Irish Literature . Clarendon Press, Oxford 1996. ISBN 0198661584

poetry

• Matthew Campbell (Ed.): The Cambridge Companion to Contemporary Irish Poetry . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York 2003. ISBN 0521813018
• Eamon Grennan: Facing the Music: Irish Poetry in the Twentieth Century . Creighton University Press, Omaha, NE 1999. ISBN 1881871282
• Peter Mackay, Edna Longley and Fran Brearton (Eds.): Modern Irish and Scottish Poetry. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York 2011. ISBN 0521196027
• Justin Quinn: The Cambridge Introduction to Modern Irish Poetry, 1800-2000 . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York 2008. ISBN 0521846730
• Gregory A. Schirmer: Out of What Began: A History of Irish Poetry in English . Cornell University Press, Ithaca NY 1998. ISBN 080143498X

drama

• Chris Morash: A History of Irish Theater, 1601-2000 . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York 2002. ISBN 0521641179
• Shaun Richards (Ed.): The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Irish Drama. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York 2003. ISBN 0521804000
• Sanford Sternlicht: Modern Irish Drama: WB Yeats to Marina Carr . Syracuse University Press, Syracuse NY 2010. ISBN 0815632452

Secondary literature in German

• Jochen Achilles and Rüdiger Imhof: Irish playwrights of the present . Scientific Book Society Darmstadt 1996. ISBN 3534126564
• Joachim Kornelius, Erwin Otto and Gerd Stratmann (eds.): Introduction to contemporary Irish literature . University Press C. Winter, Heidelberg 1980. ISBN 353302959X (= English Research 148)
• Heinz Kosok: History of Anglo-Irish Literature . Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 1990. ISBN 3770523075
• Klaus Lubbers: History of Irish narrative prose. From the beginning to the end of the 19th century. Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munich 1985. ISBN 3770523075
• Friedhelm Rathjen : The green ink: A small guide through Irish literature . Edition ReJoyce, Scheeßel 2004. ISBN 3000131906

Web links

• Lauren Arrington: Irish Modernism - Article in Oxford Research Encyclopedias - Literature , February 2017

swell

1. ↑ Julius Pokorny: Die Celtischen Literaturen (revised by Hildegard Tristram), in: Kindlers new Literature Lexicon , Vol. 20 Munich 1996, pp. 204–230, here: pp. 205–207.
2. ↑ Elisabeth Schack: Introduction to: Irish storytellers of the present. Reclam, Stuttgart 1974, pp. 3-13.
3. ↑ Quoted from Henning Hoff: Dragged into the room . ZEIT online, October 11, 2005