Irish culture and colonial modernity, 1800-2000
Subtitle: the transformation of oral space
By: David Lloyd
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Cambridge; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 285
ISBN-13: 9781107008977
Subjects: Oral tradition; Irish National characteristics; Ethnicity
Description: "From the Famine to political hunger strikes, from telling tales in the pub to Beckett's tortured utterances, the performance of Irish identity has always been deeply connected to the oral. Exploring how colonial modernity transformed the spaces that sustained Ireland's oral culture, this book explains why Irish culture has been both so creative and so resistant to modernization. David Lloyd brings together manifestations of oral culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, showing how the survival of orality was central both to resistance against colonial rule and to Ireland's modern definition as a postcolonial culture. Specific to Ireland as these histories are, they resonate with postcolonial cultures globally. This study is an important and provocative new interpretation of Irish national culture and how it came into being"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: Introduction: a history of the Irish orifice; 1. Irish hunger: the political economy of the potato; 2. Closing the mouth: disciplining oral space; 3. Counterparts: the public house, masculinity and temperance nationalism; 4. 'Going nowhere': oral space in the cell block; 5. The breaker's yard: from forensic to interrogation modernity; 6. On extorted speech: back to How It Is; Bibliography; Index.