Irish literary renaissance

Irish literary renaissance, flowering of Irish literary talent at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century that was closely allied with a strong political nationalism and a revival of interest in Ireland’s literary heritage.

The renaissance was inspired by the nationalistic pride of the Gaelic Revival; by the retelling of ancient heroic legends in books such as the History of Ireland (1878 and 1880) by Standish James O’Grady and A Literary History of Ireland (1899) by Douglas Hyde; and by the Gaelic League, which was formed in 1893 to revive the Irish language and culture. The early leaders of the renaissance wrote rich and passionate verse, filled with the grandeur of Ireland’s past and the music and mysticism of old Irish poetry. They were mainly members of the privileged class, and they were adept at English verse forms and familiar with lyric poetry that extolled the simple dignity of the Irish peasant and the natural beauty of Ireland.

The movement developed into a vigorous literary force that centered on the poet and playwright William Butler Yeats. Though he contributed to the foundation of the Abbey Theatre (1904), the first Irish national theater, he wrote only a few plays, which were beautiful but difficult to stage. His chief colleague was Lady Isabella Augusta Gregory, who took a leading part in the Abbey’s management and wrote many plays and translations of heroic tales and legends. The Irish Literary Theatre, established in 1898, also excelled in the production of peasant plays. The greatest dramatist of the movement was John Millington Synge, who wrote plays of great beauty and power in a stylized peasant dialect. The most famous of these was The Playboy of the Western World (1907). Its unsentimental treatment of rural Irish villagers led to riots when the work was staged at the Abbey and again when it toured the United States.

Later, Irish theater turned toward realism, mostly rural realism. Lennox Robinson, best known for his political play The Lost Leader (1918) and his comedy The Whiteheaded Boy (1916), and T.C. Murray, author of The Briery Gap (1917), were among the early realists. In reaction to rural realism, Sean O’Casey wrote three great dramas set among the working-class and impoverished communities of Dublin: The Shadow of a Gunman (1923), Juno and the Paycock (1924), and The Plough and the Stars (1926).

In poetry, in addition to Yeats, the mystic George William Russell (pseudonym AE) composed works of enduring interest. Notable among their younger contemporaries were Padraic Colum, Austin Clarke, Seumas O’Sullivan (James Sullivan Starkey), F.R. Higgins, and Oliver St. John Gogarty. The Irish Republican movement had its poets in Patrick Pearse, Thomas MacDonagh, and Joseph Mary Plunkett, all executed in 1916 for their part in the Easter Rising. Suffragist Eva Gore-Booth, whose sister, Constance Markievicz, participated in the Rising, published political plays, poems, and essays.

The noteworthy prose fiction of the renaissance includes the historical tales of O’Grady and Emily Lawless and, somewhat at a remove, the realist novels of George Moore. James Stephens also wrote stories and poetry. His most famous work, the comic novel The Crock of Gold (1912), mixes Irish folklore and fairy tales with philosophy. Its style and tone inspired comparisons to the later fiction of James Joyce.