num_pages: 478
description: British writers from Cambrensis to Spenser depicted Ireland as a remote border land inhabited by wild descendants of Asian Scythiansbarbarians to the ancient Greeks. Contemporaneous Irish writers likewise borrowed classical traditions, imagining the Orient as an ancient homeland. Lennon traces Irish Orientalism through origin legends, philology, antiquarianism, historiography into Irish literature and culture, exploring the works of Keating, O'Flaherty, Swift, Vallancey, Sheridan, Moore, Croker, Owenson, Mangan, de Vere, and others. He explores a key moment of Irish Orientalism, the twentieth-century Celtic Revival, discussing the works of Gregory, Casement, Connolly, and Joyce, but focusing on Theosophist writers W.B. Yeats, George Russell, James Stephens, and James Cousins.
language: English
title: Irish Orientalism: A Literary and Intellectual History
titlecomplete: Irish Orientalism: A Literary and Intellectual History (Syracuse University Press)
characters: William Butler Yeats, James Joyce, Jonathan Swift, Roger Casement
ratings_count: 11
places: Ireland
series: Irish Studies, Syracuse University Press
publisher: Syracuse University Press